Former Secretary of State to talk at Tufts

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright will deliver the 2007 Issam M. Fares Lecture at Tufts on March 7 at 4:30 p.m. in the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center on the Medford/Somerville campus.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright at the 2004 Democratic National Convention © HECTOR MATA/AFP

When Albright was sworn in as the 64th U.S. secretary of state on January 23, 1997, she became the first woman to hold the post and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. During her tenure, she reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor and environmental standards abroad.

Albright gained recognition as a foreign policy adviser to vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and to presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988. Although both of those campaigns failed, Albright emerged as a key adviser to Democrats on foreign policy. She was appointed ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic post, shortly after Bill Clinton was inaugurated in 1993.

As a research professor of international affairs and director of the Women in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Albright taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, Russian foreign policy and Central and Eastern European politics, and was responsible for developing programs to enhance women’s professional opportunities in international affairs.

From 1981 to 1982, Albright was a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian following an international competition in which she wrote about the role of the press in political changes in Poland during the early 1980s.

From 1978 to 1981, Albright was a staff member on the National Security Council as well as a White House staffer responsible for foreign policy legislation. She served as chief legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, D-Maine, from 1976 to 1978.

She holds a B.A. in political science from Wellesley College and a master’s and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She also studied at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and received a certificate from the Russian Institute at Columbia University.

Albright is the founder and principal of the Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm that works with businesses and organizations, and chair of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Currently the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and the first distinguished scholar of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Business School, Albright also serves on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange. She is the author of The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs (HarperCollins, 2006).

The Fares Lecture Series at Tufts began in 1993. Previous speakers have included former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain; Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former president of France; and former U.S. Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Colin L. Powell. The lecture series is supported by an endowment from the Fares Foundation that enables Tufts to implement a program to promote Middle Eastern studies in the humanities, social sciences and arts.