Madeleine Albright

Albright was born Marie Jana Körbelová in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her parents were Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat, and Anna Korbel (née Spieglová). At the time of Albright's birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than 20 years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Her father was a supporter of Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Marie Jana had a younger sister Katherine and a younger brother John (these versions of their names are Anglicized). When Marie Jana was born, her father was serving as a press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938—and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler's troops—forced the family into exile because of their links with Beneš. Josef and Anna converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941. In 1997, Albright said her parents never told her or her two siblings about their Jewish ancestry and heritage. While in England, Marie Jana was one of the children shown in a documentary film designed to promote sympathy for war refugees in London. After the defeat of the Nazis in the European theatre of World War II and the collapse of Nazi Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Korbel family returned to Prague. The family initially settled in Great Neck on the North Shore of Long Island. Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that as an opponent of Communism, he was under threat in Prague. Korbel stated "I cannot, of course, return to the Communist Czechoslovakia as I would be arrested for my faithful adherence to the ideals of democracy. I would be most obliged to you if you could kindly convey to his Excellency the Secretary of State that I beg of him to be granted the right to stay in the United States, the same right to be given to my wife and three children." With the help of Philip Moseley, a Russian language professor at Columbia University in New York City, Korbel obtained a position on the staff of the political science department at the University of Denver in Colorado. He became dean of the university's school of international relations, and later taught future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The school was named the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in 2008 in his honor. an MA and a PhD, writing her master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps and her doctoral dissertation on the role of journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968. She also took a graduate course given by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later became her boss at the U.S. National Security Council. == Career ==

Early career Albright returned to Washington, D.C., in 1968, and commuted to Columbia for her doctor of philosophy, which she earned in 1975. She began fund-raising for her daughters' school, involvement which led to several positions on education boards. She was eventually invited to organize a fund-raising dinner for the 1972 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. This association with Muskie led to a position as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. However, after the 1976 U.S. presidential election of Jimmy Carter, Albright's former professor Brzezinski was named National Security Advisor, and recruited Albright from Muskie in 1978 to work in the West Wing as the National Security Council's congressional liaison. Albright wrote: "My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes." In Shake Hands with the Devil, Roméo Dallaire writes that in 1994, in Albright's role as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., she avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" until overwhelmed by the evidence for it; this is now how she described these massacres in her memoirs. She was instructed to support a reduction or withdrawal (something which never happened) of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda but was later given more flexibility. Albright later remarked in PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda that "it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But when you were [there] at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda." Also in 1996, after Cuban military pilots shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters, she announced at a UN Security Council meeting debating a resolution condemning Cuba: "Frankly, this is not cojones. This is cowardice." When Albright appeared at a memorial service for the deceased in Miami on March 2, 1996, she was greeted with chants of "libertad". In 1996, Albright entered into a secret pact with Richard Clarke, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin to overthrow U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 selection. After 15 U.S. peacekeepers died in a failed raid in Somalia in 1993, Boutros-Ghali became a political scapegoat in the United States. They dubbed the pact "Operation Orient Express" to reflect their hope that other nations would join the United States. Although every other member of the United Nations Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali, the United States refused to yield to international pressure to drop its lone veto. After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy and became the only U.N. secretary-general ever to be denied a second term. The United States then fought a four-round veto duel with France, forcing it to back down and accept Kofi Annan as the next secretary-general. In his memoirs, Clarke said that "the entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration". The top level of the Clinton administration was divided into two camps on selecting the new foreign policy. Outgoing Chief of Staff Leon Panetta favored Albright, but a separate faction went for different candidates such as Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Albright orchestrated a campaign on her own behalf that proved successful. When Albright took office as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, she became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment. Not being a natural-born citizen of the U.S., she was not eligible as a U.S. presidential successor. During her tenure, Albright considerably influenced American foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. Following the Dayton Agreement, in which a cease-fire in the Bosnian War was reached, President Clinton committed to sending American troops to Bosnia to enforce the agreement, as strongly recommended by Albright. According to Albright's memoirs, she once argued with Colin Powell for the use of military force by asking, "What's the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it?" Albright strongly advocated for U.S. economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As Secretary of State, she represented the U.S. at the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997. She along with the British contingents boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of the Chinese-appointed Hong Kong Legislative Council, which replaced the elected one. In October 1997, she voiced her approval for national security exemptions to the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that NATO operations should not be limited by controls on greenhouse gas emissions, and hoped that other NATO members would also support the exemptions at the Third Conference of the Parties in Kyoto, Japan. (left) and Yasser Arafat at the Wye River Memorandum, 1998 According to several accounts, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. ambassador to Kenya, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in a letter directly addressed to Albright in April 1998. Bushnell was ignored. She later stated that when she spoke to Albright about the letter, Albright told her that it had not been shown to her. In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke writes about an exchange with Albright several months after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" Clarke asked. "The Republicans in Congress will go after you." "First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies", Albright shot back. "I inherited them in the shape they were." In 1998, at the NATO summit, Albright articulated what became known as the "three Ds" of NATO, "which is no diminution of NATO, no discrimination and no duplication—because I think that we don't need any of those three "Ds" to happen". In February 1998, Albright took part in a town-hall style meeting at St. John Arena in Columbus where she, William Cohen, and Sandy Berger attempted to make the case for military action in Iraq. The crowd was disruptive, repeatedly drowning out the discussion with boos and anti-war chants. James Rubin downplayed the disruptions, claiming the crowd was supportive of a war policy. Later that year, both Bill Clinton and Albright insisted that an attack on Saddam Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections. Albright was a leading proponent of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as a means to ending the Kosovo War, leading to popular media to describe it as "Madeleine's War". Albright became one of the highest level Western diplomats ever to meet Kim Jong-il, the then-leader of communist North Korea, during an official state visit to that country in 2000. On January 8, 2001, in one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright made a farewell call to Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions, even after the end of the Clinton administration on January 20, 2001. Albright received the U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation, in 2001. Post-Clinton administration Following Albright's term as Secretary of State, Czech president Václav Havel spoke openly about the possibility of Albright succeeding him. Albright was reportedly flattered, but denied ever seriously considering the possibility of running for office in her country of origin. Albright was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. Also that year, Albright founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., that later become the Albright Stonebridge Group. Affiliated with the firm is Albright Capital Management, which was founded in 2005 to engage in private fund management related to emerging markets. Albright accepted a position on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2003. In 2005, she declined to run for re-election to the board in the aftermath of the Richard Grasso compensation scandal, in which Grasso, the chairman of the NYSE board of directors, had been granted $187.5 million in compensation, with little governance by the board on which Albright sat. During the tenure of the interim chairman, John S. Reed, Albright served as chairwoman of the NYSE board's nominating and governance committee. Shortly after the appointment of the NYSE board's permanent chairman in 2005, Albright submitted her resignation. According to PolitiFact, Albright opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, although after the U.S. was committed to the war, she said she would support the President. Albright served on the board of directors for the Council on Foreign Relations and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. Albright served as chairperson of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She was also the co-chair of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor and was the chairwoman of the Council of Women World Leaders ''Women's Ministerial Initiative'' up until November 16, 2007, when she was succeeded by Margot Wallström. Albright guest starred on the television drama Gilmore Girls as herself on October 25, 2005. created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace. Their appointment was criticized by Harut Sassounian and the Armenian National Committee of America, as both Albright and Cohen had spoken against a Congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide. greets Albright, February 6, 2013 Albright endorsed and supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. Albright was a close friend of Clinton and served as an informal advisor on foreign policy matters. On December 1, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama nominated then-Senator Clinton for Albright's former post of Secretary of State. During this period, she also served as a business consultant and brand ambassador for Herbalife, a global multi-level marketing (MLM) corporation that develops and sells dietary supplements. The company is alleged to be a fraudulent pyramid scheme. and Madeleine Albright at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2017 In September 2009, Albright opened an exhibition of her personal jewelry collection at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, which ran until January 2010. In October 2012, Albright appeared in a video on the official Twitter feed for the Democratic Party, responding to then-GOP candidate Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was the "number-one geopolitical foe" of the United States. According to Albright, Romney's statement was proof that he had "little understanding of what was actually going on in the 21st Century [and] he is not up to date and that is a very dangerous aspect [of his candidacy]". Albright described Donald Trump as "the most un-American, anti-democratic leader" in U.S. history. She also criticized the Trump administration for its delay in filling some diplomatic posts as a sign of "disdain for diplomacy". After 2016, Albright served as chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm, and chair of the advisory council for The Hague Institute for Global Justice, which was founded in 2011 in The Hague. She also served as an Honorary Chair for the World Justice Project (WJP). The WJP works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity. Investments Albright was a co-investor with Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and George Soros in a $350 million investment vehicle called Helios Towers Africa, which intends to buy or build thousands of mobile phone towers in Africa. == Controversies ==

Sanctions against Iraq During the 1990s and 2000s, many surveys and studies concluded that excess deaths in Iraq—specifically among children under the age of five—greatly increased after the implementation of sanctions against Iraq following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Later surveys conducted during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) "all put the U5MR in Iraq during 1995–2000 in the vicinity of 40 per 1000," suggesting that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions." On May 12, 1996, then-ambassador Albright defended the sanctions on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her, "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it." Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda", saying that her question was a loaded question. She wrote, "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean", and that she regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel". and a 2020 interview with The New York Times, calling them "totally stupid". Art ownership lawsuit Following The Washington Posts profile of Albright by Michael Dobbs, an Austrian man named Philipp Harmer launched legal action against Albright, claiming her father had illegally taken possession of artwork that belonged to his great-grandfather, Karl Nebrich. Nebrich, a German-speaking Prague industrialist, abandoned some of the possessions in his apartment when ethnic Germans were expelled from the country after World War II under the Beneš decrees. His apartment, at 11 Hradčanská Street in Prague, was subsequently given to Korbel and his family. Harmer alleged that Korbel stole his great-grandfather's artwork. Counsel for Albright's family stated that Harmer's claim was unfounded. Filmmaker Emir Kusturica expressed thanks to Czech director Václav Dvořák for organizing and participating in the demonstration. Together with other protesters, Dvořák also reported Albright to the police, stating that she was spreading ethnic hatred and disrespect to the victims of the war. Albright's involvement in the bombing of Serbia was the main cause of the demonstration—a sensitive topic which became even more controversial when it was revealed that in 2012 her investment firm, Albright Capital Management, was preparing to bid in the proposed privatization of Kosovo's state-owned telecom and postal company, Post and Telecom of Kosovo. In an article published by the New York City-based magazine Bloomberg Businessweek, it was estimated that the deal could be as large as €600 million. Serbia opposed the sale, and intended to file a lawsuit to block it, alleging that the rights of former Serbian employees were not respected. The bid never happened and was withdrawn by her investment fund. Hillary Clinton campaign comment Albright supported Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. While introducing Clinton at a campaign event in New Hampshire ahead of that state's primary, Albright said, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other" (a phrase Albright had used on several previous occasions in other contexts). In a New York Times op-ed published several days after the remark, Albright said: "I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line. I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender." == Honorary degrees and awards ==

, Kosovo named in honor of Madeleine Albright Albright held honorary degrees from Brandeis University (1996), Mount Holyoke College (1997), the University of Washington (2002), Smith College (2003), Washington University in St. Louis (2003), University of Winnipeg (2005), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007), Knox College (2008), Bowdoin College (2013), Dickinson College (2014), and Tufts University (2015). In 1998, Albright was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Albright was the second recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation. In March 2000 Albright received an Honorary Silver Medal of Jan Masaryk at a ceremony in Prague sponsored by the Bohemian Foundation and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2006, she was named by Carnegie Corporation to the inaugural class of winners of the Great Immigrants Award. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. In 2019, Time created 89 new covers to celebrate women of the year starting from 1920; it chose Albright for 1999. In 2020, Albright was named by Time among the world's 100 powerful women who defined the last century. Albright was selected for the inaugural 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50; made up of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, and creators who are over the age of 50. == Personal life ==

Albright married Joseph Albright in 1959. The couple had three daughters before divorcing in 1982. She had been raised Catholic, but converted to the Episcopal Church upon her marriage in 1959. Albright was a devout Episcopalian, regularly attending services at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. Her parents had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941, during her early childhood, after fleeing Czechoslovakia for England in 1939, to avoid anti-Jewish persecution before they immigrated to the U.S. They never discussed their Jewish ancestry with her later. Albright said that she did not learn until age 59 that both her parents were born and raised in Jewish families. As many as a dozen of her relatives in Czechoslovakia—including three of her grandparents—had been murdered in the Holocaust. In addition to English, Russian, and Czech, Albright spoke French, German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian. She also understood spoken Slovak. Albright mentioned her physical fitness and exercise regimen in several interviews. In 2006, she said she was capable of leg pressing . Albright was listed as one of the 50 best-dressed over 50s by The Guardian in March 2013. Death and funeral Albright died from cancer in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2022, at the age of 84. Many political figures paid tribute to her, including U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and former British prime minister Tony Blair. Her funeral, held at Washington National Cathedral on April 27, was attended by President Joe Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former vice president Al Gore, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, as well as presidents Salome Zourabichvili of Georgia and Vjosa Osmani of Kosovo. She was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, Washington, DC. == Bibliography ==