| Albright urges students to pursue dreams BY SALLY ACHARYA
Photo by Jeff Watts
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright urges students to take risks. |
Madeleine Albright never imagined she could become secretary of state. “It’s not that I lacked ambition,” the first woman to serve as secretary of state told AU students. “It’s that I’d never seen a secretary of state in a skirt.” When former president Bill Clinton’s top diplomat spoke last week to a packed crowd at Bender Arena, she urged students not to be lulled into putting their dreams on hold. We live in a social environment where there is pressure to be part of the crowd, she said. In such a world, it may seem necessary to temper ambition for security. But security implies absence of risk, and “to run from risk is to run from life.” It’s to run from opportunities, she said, that will not come again. If we keep waiting until we have a secure job, a down payment on a house, can put our kids through college, and ultimately have a retirement nest egg, we’ll wait “until we run out of untils.” Albright also spoke of the false promise of technology. While technological advances can indeed bring the world together, “technology by itself is no substitute for leadership,” she said, noting that the Nazis, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the instigators of Rwandan genocide, and al Qaeda all used technology to disseminate a message of hate. When Americans teach technology to the world, she said, we must also not be shy about sharing our contempt for bigotry and our enthusiasm for the interplay of competing ideas. Liberty, she said, is not just ours to enjoy; it’s a responsibility we owe to our posterity. She quoted her father, a Czech diplomat: “[Americans] are so free they don’t even realize the invaluable gift of freedom.” Having fled Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis, she learned later in life that her Jewish family had converted to Catholicism for self-preservation and that many relatives died in the death camps. Graduating with honors from Wellesley College, Albright was introduced to Washington circles through her marriage to media scion Joseph Medill Albright. Not content to be a high-society wife and mother, she earned a doctorate in international relations and then pursued a career. Her first professional job, at age 39, was as chief legislative assistant for Sen. Edmund Muskie. Shortly afterwards, she was made a staff member in the Carter White House. After a series of high-level positions, including a professorship at Georgetown, the Russia and Central Europe expert became a member of Clinton’s cabinet, ambassador to the United Nations, and secretary of state from 1997 to 2000. In her AU appearance, sponsored by the Kennedy Political Union, Albright took questions from the audience about subjects as wide ranging as North Korea, progress in Iraq, and reflections on Rwanda, saying “the best part about no longer being secretary of state is I can actually answer your questions.” Asked about Korea’s Kim Jong Il, she said, “our intelligence information about him was wrong. They said he’s crazy and a pervert. He’s not crazy.” She was the first secretary of state to meet with the Korean leader, but because the Bush administration has been following a tack “which they themselves have called ABC, Anything But Clinton,” much of the progress of those years has stalled or been lost, she said. “Talking to another leader is not appeasement,” she said. Asked about progress in Iraq, she said, “I actually said more terrible things about Saddam Hussein than any other official, so I understand the ‘why’ [of the war], but not ‘why now.’” She said she is “minimally more hopeful” after the recent election, adding “we have to leave. The question is how to do it in a way that doesn’t make a chaotic situation worse.” It’s conceivable that the new government could ask us to leave, she said. “That would be the cleanest solution,” she said. Albright also commented on Rwanda and Darfur, telling the students that both she and Clinton have apologized for the lack of response to the Rwandan genocide, but that “for whatever reason, the information did not rise up.” Because it was “volcanic genocide” that occurred rapidly and catastrophically, even if the United States had the information and decided to act, “I don’t think we could have gotten ourselves together in time,” although “I wish we had tried.” But the current situation in the Sudan is different because it is “rolling genocide, not volcanic,” and the ongoing nature of the turmoil has given the international community and the United States ample time to react. It would be most effective, she said, if Muslim countries would take the lead in the reaction to Darfur. She also told the students, to loud applause, that “the highest level of patriotism is to ask the questions,” and that “it’s very important to go out and go to marches and show what you believe in. Because that’s democracy.” |
