Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I may disagree with what Condoleezza Rice stands for, but I cannot but admire her as an academician, and as a woman who has broken the ethnic barrier to become secretary of state.
I first heard of Rice, read about her to be exact, during a symposium that convened in Cairo in July 1989. Organised by the National Council of Negro Women, the symposium titled "Egypt: cradle of civilisations" was invoked by none other than the Reverend Jesse Jackson, with Mrs Suzanne Mubarak as its speaker, who was introduced by the then American Ambassador Frank G Wisner, a lover of Egypt.
I was impressed by the number of Egyptian speakers -- Fayza Heikal, Laila Takla, Shafiqa Nasser, Mona Makram Ebeid, Mona Karashy and Malak Madkour -- all feminist activists.
In the kit distributed by the symposium organisers was a magazine called Sisters, published by the convent, and which sought to "exchange ideas and address the needs, interests, concerns and aspirations of the black woman and her community".
The main article in that particular issue was titled "Secret weapon at the NSC [National Security Council] -- Condoleezza Rice, breaking barriers in Bush's team." At the age of 34 she was chosen by Bush, director for Soviet and East European affairs on the NSC, presided over by Brent Scowcroft.
The article gives the life story of Condi (who was thus known to her family and friends) from the time she was born in Birmingham, Alabama, until she assumed her present job. It is the story of will and perseverance of a child who aimed high. When her father, who was a university professor, took her at the age of nine to see the White House, she stood in front of the building and said "I'm standing in front of the White House now, but one day I'm going to be in it."
Finishing her schooling, she joined the University of Denver where she was a majored in music. According to the article, she could read music before she could read words. Her ambition was to become a concert pianist.
But one day, the article goes on, "when an adviser was talking about the great musician she would become, she had an epiphany -- realising it just wasn't in her". "I started looking around for a major," she tells Phil McCombs, the writer of the article, "and I needed one that I could finish quick. I liked politics, I wasn't quite clear on what "political science" was, but it sounded interesting".
She studied Soviet affairs and enjoyed learning the Russian language -- "its musicality and complexity make you communicate on a much wider range of nuances and emotions than English."
Within a few years, Rice was producing what one academic calls "path-breaking work" on the Soviet military, with particular emphasis on its organisation, subtleties of the political alliances and in-fighting among its general officers.
An academic says that Rice "brings prodigious expertise, both academic and practical, to her position. She has a broad intellectual conception of the problems and realities of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe".
In 1981 she obtained her PhD from Denver and in the same year signed on with Stanford University as an assistant professor and became a popular lecturer whose classes were often over subscribed.
When George W Bush ran for president, Rice worked occasionally in his campaign critiquing papers on foreign policy. She gave lectures on nuclear strategy and when she spoke, one time, in Russian to Soviet officials, one of the Soviet papers wrote that "she should be busy cooking and driving her admirers mad... instead she aptly juggles numbers of missiles." On this Rice was quoted as commenting that "They just have no context for somebody like me."
I sincerely believe that during her visit to Cairo, Condoleezza Rice should meet academics, beside politicians.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/748/cu3.htm