Susan Rice

Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and public official.

A member of the Democratic Party, Rice served as the 22nd Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council from 2021 to 2023, as the 27th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, and as the 23rd U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.

Rice was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Stanford University and New College, Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and received a DPhil (PhD).

In 1978, her mother married Alfred Bradley Fitt, an attorney, who at the time was general counsel of the U. S. Congressional Budget Office.

Rice said that her parents taught her to "never use race as an excuse or advantage," and as a young girl she "dreamed of becoming the first U.S. senator from the District of Columbia".

Rice was a three-letter varsity athlete, student government president, and valedictorian at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., a private girls' day school.

Her doctoral dissertation was entitled Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979–1980: Implications for International Peacekeeping.

Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, honored her dissertation as the UK's most distinguished in international relations.

During her time at Oxford, Rice was a member of the Oxford University Women's Basketball Team.

She attended Stanford University, where she won a Truman Scholarship and graduated with a BA with honors in history in 1986.

She was also awarded a National Merit Scholarship and elected Phi Beta Kappa her junior year.

Rice attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where she earned Master of Philosophy (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees, both in International Relations.

Rice served as a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during his campaign in the 1988 presidential election.

She was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, from 1990 to early 1992.

Rice worked in McKinsey's Toronto office.

Rice was born in Washington D.C., to education policy scholar Lois Rice (née Dickson), who helped design the federal Pell Grant subsidy system and who joined the Brookings Institution in 1992; and Emmett J. Rice (1919–2011), a Cornell University economics professor and the second black governor of the Federal Reserve System.

Her maternal grandparents were Jamaican immigrants to Portland, Maine; her paternal grandparents were the descendants of enslaved Africans and from South Carolina.

Her parents divorced when Rice was ten years of age.

She served on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff from 1993 to 1997 and was the assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the State Department from 1997 to 2001.

Appointed at age 32, Rice was at the time the youngest person to have served as a regional assistant secretary of state.

Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.–Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting HIV/AIDS.

A former Brookings Institution fellow, Rice served as a foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Barack Obama.

Rice served in the Clinton administration in various capacities: at the National Security Council (NSC) from 1993 to 1997 (as director for international organizations and peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995, and as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs from 1995 to 1997); and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001.

Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.-Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rice reportedly said, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?"

She denied the quote but acknowledged the mistakes made at the time and felt that a debt needed repaying.

The inability or failure of the Clinton administration to do anything about the genocide would form her later views on possible military interventions.

She said of the experience: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required."

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a longtime mentor and family friend to Rice, urged Clinton to appoint Rice as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1997.

Timothy M. Carney, former U.S. ambassador to Sudan, co-authored an op-ed in 2002 claiming that in 1997 Sudan offered to turn over its intelligence on bin Laden but that Rice, together with then NSC terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke, successfully lobbied for continuing to bar U.S. officials from engaging with the Khartoum government.

Similar allegations were made by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Rose and Richard Miniter, author of Losing Bin Laden.

The allegations against Rice were determined to be unfounded by the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission, which found no evidence that Sudan ever made an offer to share intelligence on bin Laden.

After Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Rice was nominated as Ambassador to the United Nations.

The Senate confirmed her by unanimous consent on January 22, 2009.

During her tenure at the United Nations, Rice championed a human rights and anti-poverty agenda, elevated climate change and LGBT and women's rights as global priorities, and committed the U.S. to agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

She also defended Israel at the Security Council, pushed for tough sanctions against Iran and North Korea, and advocated for U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.

Mentioned as a possible replacement for retiring United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2012, Rice withdrew from consideration following controversy related to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.

Later in 2012, during an interview with The New Republic, Rice stated "To suggest that I'm repenting for [Rwanda] or that I'm haunted by that or that I don't sleep at night because of that or that every policy I've implemented subsequently is driven by that is garbage."

President Barack Obama instead named her National Security Advisor in 2013, where she supported U.S. efforts on the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, the Ebola epidemic, the reopening to Cuba, and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In 2021, Rice became the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden administration.