Madeleine Albright was the first female secretary of state in U.S. history.
- Died: March 23, 2022 (Who else died on March 23?)
- Details of death: Died of cancer at the age of 84.
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Influential U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright was a pioneering diplomat who was highly influential in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Her family immigrated to the United States from the Czech Republic in 1948 after communists seized power. She became a United States citizen in 1957 and earned a PhD from Columbia University. She worked on the National Security Council and became a faculty member at Georgetown University. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her to be the U.S. ambassador for the United Nations and she became the first female U.S. secretary of state in 1997 taking over for Warren Christopher, serving in that role until President Clinton left office.
While in office as secretary of state, Albright supported the strengthening of the NATO alliance and the addition of former Soviet bloc countries and pushed for NATO to intervene in the genocide during the Balkan War. She was a supporter of environmental concerns, reasoning that NATO operations should be limited by controls on greenhouse gas emissions. She worked against nuclear weapons being developed by rogue countries and met with Kim Jong-il in North Korea in 2000 but was unable to reach a deal with him to limit their ballistic missiles. She was influential in getting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1998 to allow UN inspectors back in when it was believed he was building biological and chemical weapons.
After her public service, she wrote several books, taught at Georgetown University, and served on many think tanks.
A surprising ancestry
Madeleine Albright discovered much later in life that she was born Jewish. Her father Josef was a diplomat who took his family out of Czechoslovakia to London after Hitler and the Nazi’s invaded the country. While in London, they made the difficult decision to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1941 as the Nazi regime terrorized Europe. The children were baptized and their parents made up a family history that involved Catholic holidays in their past. They went back to their home country after the war but left for the United States in 1948 when the communists took control. In the 1990s, Madeleine Albright discovered her Jewish ancestry when the Washington Post published a piece reporting that her parents had been Jewish and converted during World War II. She accepted the information as the truth and told the New York Times, “I think my father and mother were the bravest people alive. They dealt with the most difficult decision anyone could make. I am incredibly grateful to them, and beyond measure.”
Notable Quote
“As secretary, I will do my best to talk about foreign policy not in abstract terms, but in human terms and bipartisan terms,” she said. “I consider this vital because in our democracy, we cannot pursue policies abroad that are not understood and supported here at home.” – Albright said in a speech at Rice University according to the New York Times
Tributes to Madeleine Albright
Full Obituary: New York Times
