Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor, has been selected as the 2018 recipient of the Hubert H. Humphrey Award given out by the American Political Science Association (APSA). However, the announcement of the award has upset some members of the political science field. Over 130 scholars have signed a petition calling for the APSA to revoke Rice’s award.
The petition states that by giving Rice the award, “the APSA has honored a person who actively participated in creating a rationale for the illegal invasion of Iraq, participated in and defended the creation of policies of rendition and torture against foreign nationals, supported the creation of a concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, and aided and abetted the deliberate and systematic lies that were told to the American public to encourage their support for the invasion of Iraq, which, from its inception and to this day, has had catastrophic consequences for the world.”
The petition, which was created by Thomas L. Dunn, a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and Jodi Dean, professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, also urges the ASAP to create an oversight committee that would evaluate candidates records and “screen out those who have participated in policies that have had the consequence of the systematic violation of the human rights of others.”
Dr. Rice currently serves as the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy in the Graduate School of Business, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and as a professor of political science at Stanford University. She first joined the faculty at Stanford in 1981 and serves as provost from 1993 to 1999.
Professor Rice holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Denver. She also holds a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame.
I support Dr. Rice for this award. Her mother taught my Home Economics II teacher, Mrs. Doric Crooks in Birmingham, Alabama and she instilled in me those values that Mrs. Rice taught her and that is the value of education is something no one can take away from you. Mrs. Crooks is in her late eighties and her mind is as sharp as ever. I love going to visit her, to hear those stories of a teacher named Mrs. Rice who would one day give birth to a daughter named Condoleezza Rice, who would go on to represent this country very honorable. I want to remind people that the Democratic party in Alabama would not allow her father to register to vote but the Republican party welcomed him with open arms. She is a native Alabamian and I support her, 110 percent!
Thanks for adding insight into the background of Dr. Rice.