Had it not been for a university course and, more specifically, a university professor, Condoleezza Rice might have been on stage at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts Thursday night as a concert pianist instead of as a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush.
I had a couple of false starts, Rice, an accomplished pianist who once had every intention of playing at Carnegie Hall, told the audience of more than 1,000.
A course her junior year in international politics taught by Madeline Albrights father helped her chart a new path.
In 1990, standing on the White House Lawn watching Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife board a helicopter, it crossed my mind that Im glad I changed my major, she said with a smile.
Today, Rice is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; a senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, and a founding partner of RiceHardleyGates, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.
During her time in office, Rice had a front seat to history as an active participant and she shared several of the more poignant stories during her address, including watching as the Berlin Wall came down and Germany reunified, and the day that U.S. came under terrorist attack.
Rice also gave the audience glimpses into her life as a child growing up in Civil Rights-era Birmingham, Alabama, where she and her parents lived with segregation and one of her classmates was killed in the bombing of a black church by white supremacists.
She was sworn in as the first female black secretary of state by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Jewish female, holding up a copy of the U.S. Constitution that once had a provision allowing slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a man.
But people, and society, can change, she said, noting that her father taught her to work twice as hard and to not allow herself to be a victim when she was wronged advice that can apply to anyone in any station in life, she added.
She noted that although racial inequality and tensions still exist in America today, she believes there has been progress.
I believe the great majority of people want it to work, she said.
Rices underlying message was one of optimism that the nation can heal divides and move past troubling political times.
This is the most public-minded generation of students Ive taught; they want to do something bigger than themselves, she said.
She was passionate about driving home several points:
The nation will continue to be politically polarized until people stop narrowing their intellectual focus to include only sources of information, associates, and friends thatendorse their world view, and until people begin counting to 10 before using social media.
