Condoleezza Rice speaks at BVU

Kevin Coriolan | News Editor

Former 66th Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, spoke to students of Buena Vista University (BVU) Saturday afternoon as the 21st laureate of the William W. Siebens American Heritage Lecture Series (AHLS).

The hyped up event lasted 75 minutes and consisted of 12 questions from a student panel. Senior Michael Boyle was one of the six students (along with two alternates) chosen to be on the panel after a competitive application process during last spring semester. After months of preparation, he thought the event went smoothly, mainly due to Rice’s posture.

“She had almost a calming presence. I actually had a lot more fun asking the questions and getting her answers than I thought I would,” Boyle said.

One of his questions identified Rice’s former professor Alan Gilbert as convinced that Rice fell in line with Marxist philosophies. After a chuckle and an explanation of her political ideologies, Rice assured everyone in the audience that she was never a Marxist individual.

The students, who worked along with four faculty members, researched and crafted questions over the summer all throughout the fall semester to far to stir intellectually stimulating answers from Rice. Several questions pertained to Rice’s careers as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

“The international community is a fiction. It is actually a system,” Rice said. This was her answer to junior student panelist Hannah Puderbaugh’s question in the first round touching on the United States’ assumption of being world policemen.

Rice went on to discuss the League of Nations in which the United States chose not to include itself after seeing the first teeth of world war. However, the nation entered international battles again after Pearl Harbor was attacked at the beginning of World War II. Rice believes that the U.S. has a responsibility to protect its values and guard its interests and cannot avoid being part of the international system.

“Being up on stage with Condoleezza was an honor. It’s certainly something I would not have been able to do would I not have been at BV and applied for this. It was a lot of work to prepare for this opportunity, but I am very grateful to have done it,” senior student panelist Mariana Ramirez said.

All of the student panelists, including Ramirez, received the opportunity to ask Rice two questions, one for each round.

Ramirez questioned the infringement of Arab and Muslim people’s civil liberties after the 9/11 tragedy. Rice responded with examples of ways that Americans supported those of Middle-Eastern descent during the age of terrorism. She noted that President George W. Bush went to services at mosques, and White House employees honored Ramadan with special dinners.

“It can’t be that when something bad happens in the name of Islam, people for peace say nothing,” Rice said.

The final question of the afternoon came from senior panelist Jonathon Ehrlich. He alluded to a Martin Luther King Jr. speech that said “Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door, which leads to ultimate reality.”

Ehrlich followed with asking Rice for advice on how future leaders from BVU can change the world using love.

“The translation of love into diplomacy is to never engage in the patronization that [other people] would not like those things,” Rice said, referring to her own term as Secretary of State when some would think that some Middle-Eastern countries were not ready for democracy. Looking back, she said this attitude of others was condescending.

“Always assume that people deserve the same rights that you do,” Rice said.