Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it. Administrators expect it: The former provost will be back at Stanford in 2009.
The future plans of Rice — who is on-leave as a political science professor and Hoover Institution senior fellow while serving in Washington — have been the subject of intense speculation in the Stanford community. During her visit to the Hewlett Packard (HP) labs in Palo Alto yesterday, Rice said she expected to reenter academia when she completes her duties in Washington.
“We talked a little bit about the need for further education of our engineering and math-science graduates,” she said after touring HP, “something that I’m particularly interested in as a professor, former professor, soon-to-be future professor again.”
With these words, Rice hinted at a prospect that many at Stanford hope will come true, some doubt will last and a few approach with criticism.
Rice’s role
In recent interviews with The Daily, faculty and administrators largely agreed that Rice will come back to the University, but were less certain what role she will play upon her return.
Political Science Prof. Steven Krasner, who worked with Rice as director of policy planning at the State Department, said the former provost has told him she plans to come back.
“She’s said publicly and also said privately that right now her intention is to return,” he said.
But President John Hennessy said he could not make specific predictions about her position at the University should she return to Stanford.
“We have not discussed what role she might have and will probably not have this discussion until she returns,” he said in an email to The Daily, “but Dr. Rice’s stated interest is in returning to teaching and research. As far as I know, no one from department chair to Provost and President has discussed the subject.”
Several University affiliates — including History Prof. David Kennedy ‘63, Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82 and Hoover Institution Director John Raisian — assumed that if Rice does come back, she will focus on writing her memoir rather than teaching.
“I do think she will return,” Etchemendy said in an email to The Daily. “My guess is that she will not teach in her first year back, since anyone who holds a job as overwhelming as hers needs at least a year to decompress. She will probably spend that year recording her reflections about her terms as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.”
Raisian said Rice might focus on her role at Hoover.
“If she chose not to teach but to be a full time researcher, then she’ll spend all of her time on her agenda,” he said. “We may create some things we’d like her to do — I couldn’t begin to think about what that would be — but basically she would come and she would be supported. George Shultz was the former Secretary of State and he has a tremendous leadership role.”
Still, Newsweek’s Marcus Mabry — who wrote the just-released biography of Rice entitled “Twice as Good: Condoleeza Rice and her Path to Power” — said that though he expects Rice to return to Stanford, the secretary of state does not firmly commit to her long-term goals.
“She believes that God has already set a path for each of us,” he said. “She does not believe in planning. Condoleeza Rice has not had a long-term goal since she failed in her only long-term goal — which was to be a concert pianist. She has not decided, as she told me for the book, what she’s going to do in Jan. 2009.”
Raisian agreed with Mabry, but said the Hoover Institution would welcome her back with open arms.
“Condi’s the kind of person that concentrates on the task at hand and thinks about transitions when they’re much closer to happening,” he said, “but we’re wide open to welcoming her back. We’d love to have her full-time or part-time. I think there’s a very high probability we’ll have her back.”
Will she stay?
Though she expects to return to Stanford as a professor, Rice is unlikely to stay for long, according to pundits and a number of University affiliates.
“There’s no question she’ll come back to Stanford in Jan. 2009,” Mabry said. “How long she’ll stay at Stanford — that’s the question. I think she’ll be affiliated with Stanford her whole life. Will she stay as a mere professor for the next 30 years? I don’t think so. That will never happen.”
“She’s always said she wasn’t interested in public office when she’s had opportunities in the past,” he said. “No one knows what will happen. But no, I don’t see her thinking about that actively. Would she come back when her intention was to run for the presidency in 2012? No, I don’t think so. Could that happen? Yeah.”
“She may have a political future, as the governor of California, perhaps, or vice president of the United States, or, perhaps one day, president, though not in ‘08,” he said. “She may get in ‘08 as a vice president. If you see Hillary/Obama on the Democrat side, you may see Rice getting tapped.”
Kennedy also said that while a position as a University president would be a logical choice for Rice, the secretary has made it clear that such a post does not interest her. He added that she has expressed interest in a job on Wall Street, but he said with certainty that he could not imagine her remaining at Stanford for the rest of her career.
“I’d be surprised if she were content to live out her days in the groves of academia,” he said. “She’s still a young woman. Stanford — she’s been here, done that. This would be a wonderful place for her to take a deep breath.”
Krasner said he thought Rice might seriously reconsider her decision last year to turn down the job of National Football League (NFL) commissioner.
“Here’s someone with tremendous experience, tremendous talent,” he said. “It’s not clear what will happen to her over the next 10 years. If the NFL commissioner job suddenly came open again, I think she’d think about that very seriously.”
Reaction to Rice
Professors who spoke to The Daily about Rice generally expressed a positive reaction to her return, though some were quick to point out that she made enemies by taking hard-line stances when she was provost from 1993 to 1999.
Krasner said he has come to admire Rice during his time working with her at both the State Department and at Stanford.
“At an individual level, she’s extremely impressive,” he said. “As Secretary of State, you have to make a lot of decisions in a short period of time. I think she’s extremely adept at doing that. She’s a strikingly grounded and decent person, and that hasn’t changed in all of the years I’ve known her.”
Kennedy praised Rice as a gifted and promising individual.
“I can remember from the first time I met her thinking she was an exceptionally poised and articulate person beyond her years,” he said. “She had a manner about her that was quite extraordinary. She was marked for some kind of success from early in her academic career.”
But not everyone will welcome Rice with open arms. A number of faculty members spoke about tense relationships that characterized her tenure as provost.
Kennedy recalled an infamous episode in which Rice squared off against former Political Science Prof. Susan Okin, who wanted to give weight to women in tenure decisions.
“Condi just kept batting her down,” Kennedy said. “I just said something about, ‘I really admire the position you took there.’ She said, ‘After you’ve talked the Ukrainians out of their nuclear arsenal, this was nothing.’ For all of the high temper of the academic scene, she had been playing for a lot bigger stakes. She’s taken on a lot of big jobs and done them well.”
Emeritus History Prof. Paul Seaver chaired a committee that shaped the Cultures, Ideas and Values (CIV) program, which focused, in part, on non-Western cultures. Seaver recalled his frustration when Rice eliminated the CIV program in favor of the current Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) curriculum.
“She was very authoritarian,” he said. “The final confrontation over the CIV program was before a committee of some people from the [Faculty] Senate and so on, and in the course of her attack on the CIV program, she said ethnicity and gender and class are so ‘80s.”
“There was a kind of universal sigh of relief when she left,” Seaver added. “I think people who remember all of that will not be happy to see her. That’s true of ethnic faculty who had more run-ins with her than any of the rest of us. Our women faculty — black faculty in particular — and Hispanic faculty do not have fond memories.”
Though some disputed Rice’s popularity, the former provost’s return to Stanford will undoubtedly be both controversial and historical. Mabry said that Rice herself knows she may face criticism — even from her own students.
“There will be people who will always criticize her policy and politics,” Mabry said. “She’s sure she’ll oversee some dissertations by Ph.D. candidates about the mistakes in this administration.”
