Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story by Antonia Felix Page A
Authors: Antonia Felix
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, Political, Cultural Heritage, Women, Artists; Architects; Photographers
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in New York City. Pressure from the new regime in Prague forced him to leave the job in 1949.
After World War II, several intensive programs in international politics were launched on U.S. campuses. As a new player on the world stage, America was in need of expert instruction on the centuries of history leading up to the formation of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. These new college programs sought out European experts who had immigrated to the United States, and the University of Denver found their expert in Josef Korbel. After leaving the UN, Korbel was hired by the university as professor in international relations. In 1959, he became dean of the Graduate School of International Studies and director of the Social Science Foundation. Throughout his career he was considered an extraordinary teacher; attentive, warm, and generous with his time. He was in demand throughout the world and acted as a visiting professor at Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, MIT and other colleges. He published six books and countless articles that focused on Eastern Europe and the Cold War.
Korbel became the second most important man in Condi’s life, next to her father. John Rice had sparked Condi’s interest in world affairs and politics when she was very young, spending time with her to discuss the news of the day. She would pattern her life after him in many ways. She has described Josef Korbel as the “intellectual father” she shared with Madeleine Albright who, like Condi, was very much her father’s daughter. “There is no doubt that Madeleine was the object of her parents’ hopes and dreams from an early age,” wrote Dobbs. “She was the oldest, the brightest, the most driven.” Madeleine described her father as strict but “very loving” and supportive.
An integral part of Condi’s new major in political science was learning Russian. Sometimes called a “ten-year language” because of the difficulty of learning its Cyrillic alphabet and grasping its complexity, this is a formidable challenge for many students. But Condi’s early lessons in French, Spanish, and German had given her an affinity for language study that helped her proceed quickly. Previous language experience gave her a solid grounding in the grammatical terms that many English students quickly forget, but are the keys to learning a new language. “It helps to have another foreign language under your belt,” said Jason Galie, a Russian instructor and Ph.D. student at Columbia, “because you use a lot of grammatical terms in the beginning, which, if you don’t remember from English grammar, makes it more difficult.” He explained that the Russian alphabet is a challenge, but not the most demanding part. “Russian is much more difficult than the Romance languages,” he said, “in part because of the alphabet. You start writing English letters instead of Russian at first. But even more difficult is understanding the role that the words are playing, which, unlike English, isn’t determined by the placement of the words in the sentence but by the endings of the words themselves. For some students that’s very difficult to grasp.”
Month by month, Condi’s increasing grasp of the language gave her a more intimate connection to the land that would become central to her life and work. With only two years to go before graduation, she did not have time to take a large group of courses in her major, but she satisfied all the requirements and did an extensive amount of reading on her own.
When the Rices moved to Denver, John became an associate pastor of Montview Presbyterian Church, and Condi spent every Thursday evening at choir practice with the church’s eighty-voice, semi-professional choir. Montview played an important role in helping Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood integrate during the 1960s. Park Hill embraced integration during the Civil Rights era and formed successful action committees similar to those that helped integrate Hyde Park in
After World War II, several intensive programs in international politics were launched on U.S. campuses. As a new player on the world stage, America was in need of expert instruction on the centuries of history leading up to the formation of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. These new college programs sought out European experts who had immigrated to the United States, and the University of Denver found their expert in Josef Korbel. After leaving the UN, Korbel was hired by the university as professor in international relations. In 1959, he became dean of the Graduate School of International Studies and director of the Social Science Foundation. Throughout his career he was considered an extraordinary teacher; attentive, warm, and generous with his time. He was in demand throughout the world and acted as a visiting professor at Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, MIT and other colleges. He published six books and countless articles that focused on Eastern Europe and the Cold War.
Korbel became the second most important man in Condi’s life, next to her father. John Rice had sparked Condi’s interest in world affairs and politics when she was very young, spending time with her to discuss the news of the day. She would pattern her life after him in many ways. She has described Josef Korbel as the “intellectual father” she shared with Madeleine Albright who, like Condi, was very much her father’s daughter. “There is no doubt that Madeleine was the object of her parents’ hopes and dreams from an early age,” wrote Dobbs. “She was the oldest, the brightest, the most driven.” Madeleine described her father as strict but “very loving” and supportive.
An integral part of Condi’s new major in political science was learning Russian. Sometimes called a “ten-year language” because of the difficulty of learning its Cyrillic alphabet and grasping its complexity, this is a formidable challenge for many students. But Condi’s early lessons in French, Spanish, and German had given her an affinity for language study that helped her proceed quickly. Previous language experience gave her a solid grounding in the grammatical terms that many English students quickly forget, but are the keys to learning a new language. “It helps to have another foreign language under your belt,” said Jason Galie, a Russian instructor and Ph.D. student at Columbia, “because you use a lot of grammatical terms in the beginning, which, if you don’t remember from English grammar, makes it more difficult.” He explained that the Russian alphabet is a challenge, but not the most demanding part. “Russian is much more difficult than the Romance languages,” he said, “in part because of the alphabet. You start writing English letters instead of Russian at first. But even more difficult is understanding the role that the words are playing, which, unlike English, isn’t determined by the placement of the words in the sentence but by the endings of the words themselves. For some students that’s very difficult to grasp.”
Month by month, Condi’s increasing grasp of the language gave her a more intimate connection to the land that would become central to her life and work. With only two years to go before graduation, she did not have time to take a large group of courses in her major, but she satisfied all the requirements and did an extensive amount of reading on her own.
When the Rices moved to Denver, John became an associate pastor of Montview Presbyterian Church, and Condi spent every Thursday evening at choir practice with the church’s eighty-voice, semi-professional choir. Montview played an important role in helping Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood integrate during the 1960s. Park Hill embraced integration during the Civil Rights era and formed successful action committees similar to those that helped integrate Hyde Park in
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