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February 22, 2002
Albright's words of inspiration
Former secretary of state reflects on her career and a changed
world.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright held her audience
rapt when she spoke in Vancouver Feb. 12, as part of the Unique
Lives and Experiences lecture series. Albright's presentation was
part inspirational, part lessons from the hard-knock world of international
diplomacy.
Albright's career reflected the social changes of the last century.
Born to a successful family in Czechoslovakia, she was taken by
her parents to London before the Second World War. The family moved
to America after the war and their possessions were carried to Colorado
in a Mayflower moving van, leading Albright's father to declare
that their family had arrived on the Mayflower.
The young Madeleine seems to have wished her father's joke was more
literal. She struggled to fit into ordinary American teenagehood
and worked strenuously to lose her accent. She excelled at school
and graduated from prestigious Wellesley College in 1959.
Three days after graduating, Albright married and began a family.
Her ambition swelled, however, and she began working as a legislative
assistant to Sen. Edmund Muskie. Under the Carter administration,
she was appointed ambassador to the United Nations.
During the Reagan-Bush years, Albright counselled a string of losing
Democratic presidential candidates on world affairs and, after Bill
Clinton came to office, was appointed the first female secretary
of state. She notes with pride that she was succeeded by the first
African-American secretary of state, Colin Powell.
Albright spoke of her empathy for refugees and other victims of
circumstance.
Her own experience has influenced her priorities, she acknowledged.
This has worked both ways, according to some critics, who say she
over-emphasized Balkan strife while in office, giving short shrift
to other regions.
In her presentation here, however, Albright bounced from country
to continent, giving quick synopses of her take on various flashpoints.
The current Middle East situation defies easy answers, of course,
but Albright's comments were particularly facile.
Yasser Arafat can continue to straddle the fence or he can act like
the Pakistani leadership and attack terror where it resides, said
Albright.
For Israel's part, Albright was even more imprecise.
"Israel must defend itself without closing the door to peace,"
she declared. The former top diplomat for the world's most powerful
nation could not make any pronouncement more powerful than this.
Albright spoke of the achievements she had as a diplomat and as
an individual. She implied that she had as much trouble from chauvinistic
men in her own government as she did with some of the more misogynistic
men of the Middle East.
In what was an obviously moving moment for the one-time refugee,
Albright spoke of her pride while walking down from Air Force One
with the president of the United States, her adopted country, and
being greeted at the bottom by Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech
republic, the place from which her family fled decades earlier.
In a major research piece in 1997, investigative reporter Michael
Dobbs reported that Albright's family is Jewish and that her father,
apparently, hid this fact from his family and the rest of the world.
Critics at the time said that a woman of Albright's extensive knowledge
of world affairs and natural curiosity would certainly have had
an inkling of her heritage but may have chosen to leave the issue
alone for career reasons.
Though she spoke of her childhood, her return to the Czech republic
and Middle East affairs, Albright's presentation in Vancouver was
devoid of any references to her own Jewish heritage. In that, her
lecture was very much reflective of her career.
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