Madeleine Albright, First Woman To Become Secretary Of State, Dies At 84

Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, passed away at the age of 84.

Early Years: Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the daughter of a diplomat. After the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938 and the subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia, her family left the country and relocated to London.

Albright’s parents were Jewish, but converted to Catholicism in 1941 and raised their children in that faith. She was unaware of her Jewish heritage until her late adult years.

After World War II, her family returned to Czechoslovakia while she was educated in Switzerland, changing her name from Marie Jana to Madeleine. With the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, the family relocated to the United States, settling in Denver. She attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts on a full scholarship and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1957. Two years later, she married Joseph Albright, a journalist, and moved with him to Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., as he acquired different reporting jobs.

Albright continued her education during the early years of her marriage, earning an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She became involved in Democratic Party politics and became a legislative assistant to Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) in 1976. Two years later, she joined the Carter administration as the National Security Council's congressional liaison.

When Ronald Reagan became president, Albright conducted research for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution and later became a professor at Georgetown University; during this time, she divorced her husband. When the Democrats regained the White House with Bill Clinton, Albright was recruited to coordinate the National Security Council’s transition from the George H.W. Bush administration.

Diplomatic Career: President Clinton nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the second woman to hold that position. Albright’s years at the U.N. were marked with several controversies, including an initial reluctance to define the internecine killings in Rwanda as genocide and her machinations to deny U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian diplomat, a second term as the head of the world body. Nonetheless, Clinton backed her actions and named her as Secretary of State after winning re-election in 1996. She succeeded Warren Christopher, who opted not to continue in the administration’s second term.

Albright’s leadership at the State Department was notable for her efforts to secure peace and stability in the Balkans following the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Her work was also framed by a diplomatic failure to secure meaningful results in a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and in trying to dissuade North Korea from pursuing a nuclear program — she met with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to hold such talks. Her department’s handling of the intelligence that preceded the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by al-Qaeda was also called into question.

Albright favored expanding NATO and favored military action against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for failing to accommodate arms inspectors.

Post-State Department Life: With George W. Bush’s election, Albright left government to begin a consulting firm focused on international relations. She joined the board of the New York Stock Exchange in 2003 and served on its nominating and governance committee before resigning two years later. She would also serve on the board of directors for the Council on Foreign Relations, and also served as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation and the co-chair of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

Albright made several appearances on television shows as herself, guest starring on “Gilmore Girls” and “Parks and Recreation.” She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2012.

Photo: Madeleine Albright in 2013, courtesy of Commonwealth Club / Flickr Creative Commons