Madeleine Albright
Overview
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
. She was appointed by U.S. President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed
Advice and consent
Advice and consent is an English phrase frequently used in enacting formulae of bills and in other legal or constitutional contexts, describing a situation in which the executive branch of a government enacts something previously approved of by the legislative branch.-General:The expression is...
by a U.S. Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
vote of 99–0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997.
Albright now serves as a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Her PhD is from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. She holds honorary degrees from Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
(1996); the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
(2002); Smith College (2003); University of Winnipeg
University of Winnipeg
The University of Winnipeg is a public university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada that offers undergraduate faculties of art, business and economics, education, science and theology as well as graduate programs. The U of W's founding colleges were Manitoba College and Wesley College, which merged...
(2005); the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
(2007), and Knox College (2008).
Secretary Albright also serves as a Director on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
.
Albright is fluent in English, French, Russian, and Czech; she speaks and reads Polish and Serbo-Croatian as well.
Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová (ˈmarɪjɛ ˈjana ˈkorbɛlovaː) in the Smíchov
Smíchov
Smíchov is a district of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and is part of Prague 5. It is located on the west bank of the Vltava river....
district of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
.
Quotations
While not everything is the United States's fault, our lack of attention to many of issues in the Middle East — except for Iraq — has not helped the Lebanon-Israel situation.
Newsweek International interview (2006-07-24)
I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy — worse than Vietnam, not in the number of deaths, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.
Newsweek International interview (2006-07-24)
I can't think of an area where things have improved in the last five years. One of the things that troubles me is the certainty with which the Bush administration is convinced that God is on their side and that they are following a very specific plan.
Newsweek International interview (2006-07-24)