Condoleezza Rice speaks to Rice
From a non-partisan standpoint, the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president showed the world an example of true democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a speech last week. Rice spoke at a gala last Thursday commemorating the 15th anniversary of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan scholarly think tank focusing on research on domestic and foreign policy issues. The institute was ranked among the top 30 think tanks in the United States by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in January.
Rice became the 66th Secretary of State in 2005 but just the second African American to hold that position, after Colin Powell. Before her work as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the administration of President George W. Bush, she served as a political science professor and provost at Stanford University.
In her speech given in honor of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, who was in attendance, and the Baker Institute, Rice maintained that the United States is still a land of opportunity, but it needs to reshape its immigration policy and reform public education.
Rice said this month's presidential election was significant because it sent a message to the world that differences can be overcome.
"That [a country with] a girl like me who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama can now elect an African- American president is an extraordinary matter," Rice said. "Change is a good thing. The time comes for new people, time for new ideas."
People have historically thought of change as impossible, especially during the Cold War, she said. Rice referred to her time serving as director of Soviet and eastern-European affairs at the National Security Council in 1989 when Baker was secretary of state.
"It was a time when skillful diplomacy and statecraft was demanded, and Americans were fortunate to have Jim Baker as chief diplomat in bringing [about] the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union," Rice said.
She stressed the importance of having friends and allies and said that when America exists in a world with like-minded democratic states, the world is safer.
"Today in Afghanistan, NATO fights alongside us to try to bring freedom to Afghan people who [have known] nothing but war and deprivation for 30 years," Rice said. "Democracy is not a system only for those who speak the languages of the West and come from those cultures."
On the U.S. economic crisis, Rice said the free enterprise system is not the problem but the solution in overcoming current difficulties.
"We will come out of this latest global crisis and recognize that only open economies, only free economies, only economies that encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of people and their creativity are indeed the economies that will deliver," she said.
Rice said in order to lead the world, America has to be confident in its leadership and the competence of its citizens - this includes developing a better public education system and addressing the divide on immigration reform.
"America cannot continue to be a place where some people live in the shadows, contributing to our country, contributing to our economy, but somehow afraid to go to the Emergency Room to treat their children," she said. "You're American not by blood, not by nationality, not by religious faith, but by ideal."
Rice emphasized the importance of maintaining an ideal that focuses on what immigrants can contribute to the nation.
"It doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going," she said.
In order to compete on a global scale, Rice emphasized the need for adequate educational opportunities for all citizens. She traced her family's line of education back to her grandfather, who attended college on a scholarship. She said she would not be here as secretary of state if it was not for her grandfather's understanding of what education can do.
"I wonder how much we are doing in making sure that dream is alive for our children who come from modest circumstances," she said. "As an educator it breaks my heart; as secretary of state, it terrifies me. If we are not able to educate our children, we will turn inward; we will be afraid of the world."
Several Baker Institute Student Forum members were also in attendance. One, Brown College junior Shireen Nasir, said she found that Rice's message stretched beyond party lines.
"I thought her speech was really good," Nasir said. "She talked about immigration and education, and I thought, then why are you Republican?"
Rice's remarks were followed by a dinner to celebrate the institute's anniversary.
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