Obama adviser Susan Rice to be UN envoy
UNITED NATIONS - Susan Rice will be the first African-American woman to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, bringing to the job a lifetime's work on international issues, an insider's knowledge of the White House and State Department, and close ties to President-elect Barack Obama.
When Obama announced the appointment of his "close and trusted" senior foreign policy adviser to the U.N. post on Monday, he said Rice would be a member of his Cabinet like some of her U.N. predecessors "and an integral member of my team."
That could give Rice — if she is confirmed by the US Senate — a top spot in shaping US foreign policy, a role she has prepared for since she was a Rhodes Scholar studying international relations in the late 1980s.
Born Washington, D.C., in 1964, Rice was a high flyer from childhood, graduating from the National Cathedral School as valedictorian and student body president. According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, her father, Emmett J. Rice, a former governor of the Federal Reserve System, told her to "never use race as an excuse or advantage."
In her acceptance speech Friday, Rice thanked her father and mother, education scholar Lois Dickson Fitt, "who taught me that no dream is too bold to embrace," and her husband, television producer Ian Cameron, and two children, "for their patience, love and sacrifice."
Rice has roots at Stanford University, where she received her bachelor's degree, just like another famous African-American female foreign policy expert — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is no relation.
After receiving a doctorate from Oxford University and a prize for the most distinguished dissertation in Britain in the field of international relations, the new US ambassador-designate worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company from 1991-1993.
Rice then headed to the White House, where she served as the National Security Council's director of International Organizations and Peacekeeping from 1993-1995, dealing with the United Nations at the time of the 1994 Rwanda genocide when President Bill Clinton's administration blocked U.N. intervention.
She has since taken a more action-oriented position on "the responsibility to protect" civilians caught in conflict, especially in Sudan's western Darfur region, where the U.N. estimates up to 300,000 people have died. In an article last year for the Brookings Institution, where she was a senior fellow before joining the Obama campaign as an unpaid adviser, Rice said "Congress should authorize the use of force in order to end the genocide."
In 1995, Rice became the White House African expert, serving as Clinton's special assistant and the National Security Council's senior director for African affairs. She then took that expertise to the State Department where she served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs from 1997-2001, a period that covered the 1998 al-Qaida terrorist bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Obama said Monday that Rice shares his belief that the U.N. "is an indispensable and imperfect forum."
"She will carry the message that our commitment to multilateral action must be coupled with a commitment to reform," he said. "We need the United Nations to be more effective as a venue for collective action against terror and proliferation, climate change and genocide, poverty and disease."
If confirmed, Rice will follow three African-American men who have served as US ambassadors to the United Nations: Andrew Young from January 1977-September 1979; Donald McHenry from September 1979-January 1981; and Edward Perkins from May 1992-January 1993. - AP
When Obama announced the appointment of his "close and trusted" senior foreign policy adviser to the U.N. post on Monday, he said Rice would be a member of his Cabinet like some of her U.N. predecessors "and an integral member of my team."
That could give Rice — if she is confirmed by the US Senate — a top spot in shaping US foreign policy, a role she has prepared for since she was a Rhodes Scholar studying international relations in the late 1980s.
Born Washington, D.C., in 1964, Rice was a high flyer from childhood, graduating from the National Cathedral School as valedictorian and student body president. According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, her father, Emmett J. Rice, a former governor of the Federal Reserve System, told her to "never use race as an excuse or advantage."
In her acceptance speech Friday, Rice thanked her father and mother, education scholar Lois Dickson Fitt, "who taught me that no dream is too bold to embrace," and her husband, television producer Ian Cameron, and two children, "for their patience, love and sacrifice."
Rice has roots at Stanford University, where she received her bachelor's degree, just like another famous African-American female foreign policy expert — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is no relation.
After receiving a doctorate from Oxford University and a prize for the most distinguished dissertation in Britain in the field of international relations, the new US ambassador-designate worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company from 1991-1993.
Rice then headed to the White House, where she served as the National Security Council's director of International Organizations and Peacekeeping from 1993-1995, dealing with the United Nations at the time of the 1994 Rwanda genocide when President Bill Clinton's administration blocked U.N. intervention.
She has since taken a more action-oriented position on "the responsibility to protect" civilians caught in conflict, especially in Sudan's western Darfur region, where the U.N. estimates up to 300,000 people have died. In an article last year for the Brookings Institution, where she was a senior fellow before joining the Obama campaign as an unpaid adviser, Rice said "Congress should authorize the use of force in order to end the genocide."
In 1995, Rice became the White House African expert, serving as Clinton's special assistant and the National Security Council's senior director for African affairs. She then took that expertise to the State Department where she served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs from 1997-2001, a period that covered the 1998 al-Qaida terrorist bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Obama said Monday that Rice shares his belief that the U.N. "is an indispensable and imperfect forum."
"She will carry the message that our commitment to multilateral action must be coupled with a commitment to reform," he said. "We need the United Nations to be more effective as a venue for collective action against terror and proliferation, climate change and genocide, poverty and disease."
If confirmed, Rice will follow three African-American men who have served as US ambassadors to the United Nations: Andrew Young from January 1977-September 1979; Donald McHenry from September 1979-January 1981; and Edward Perkins from May 1992-January 1993. - AP
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