Extraordinary, Ordinary People

by Condoleezza Rice

  My father was just doing what he’d done all of his life: following in his father’s footsteps of educational evangelism. I resolved right then to get involved too and asked Charlie Mae to lunch a few days later. She talked about the need for extended-day learning activities, saying that children had nothing wholesome to do after school. Most extracurricular activities such as music and art had been cut because of budgetary pressures. We laughed about our experiences as children—Charlie’s in Valdosta, Georgia, and mine in Birmingham—learning to perform in endless variety shows, concerts, and debate-team competitions. I flashed back to my horrible tap dancing routine in elementary school but reflected on how lucky I’d been to have so many opportunities. Charlie and I agreed that I’d pull together a group of people who might be interested in helping.

  My first call was to Tom and Susan Ford. Tom was one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley. A real estate lawyer at Stanford in the early 1960s, Tom had developed a low-rise, environmentally sensitive set of office buildings at 3000 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, not far from Stanford. But he couldn’t get lawyers and accountants to move to the location, considered at the time to be too far from San Francisco. So he made a deal with a new and emerging industry called venture capital, offering reduced rent for a small percentage of their profits. In that way, Sand Hill Road became synonymous with those who funded the information revolution and birthed Silicon Valley. And Tom became very wealthy—and exceedingly generous and compassionate.

  Tom had recently remarried, and his new wife, Susan, and I had become friends. They immediately signed on to help. Susan and I brought together other community leaders from Palo Alto, among them Steve Player, a Palo Alto lawyer, and Charla Rolland, the black school superintendent of Los Lomitas, one of the wealthiest districts in California. We enlisted Larry Tripplett, a former school principal who owned the McDonald’s franchise in East Palo Alto, and Erma Moore, a well-regarded beauty shop owner. Randy Bean put together our application for 501(c)3 status as a nonprofit. A recent Stanford graduate, Mia Jackson, wrote proposals, and we lined up core donors from local foundations and corporations. The board members all agreed to make individual contributions according to their means. Everything was in place, and so together with Charlie Knight, my father, and my stepmother, Clara, this group planned to launch the Center for a New Generation (CNG).

  We had no idea how hard it would be. There was a political power structure in East Palo Alto that was suspicious of outsiders and determined to keep control. It didn’t help that I was from Stanford, which, as my father had noted, had a well-deserved reputation for misguided noblesse oblige. There were also a number of nonprofits in East Palo Alto run by residents of the city that were little more than jobs programs for the staffs of the organizations. Money had flowed to these programs from corporations and foundations with little demand for accountability. In this way, Palo Alto had eased its conscience, but it was hard to argue that kids were being helped by what my dad called “guilt money.” Some of the directors of these programs, who were often powerful people in the city, saw CNG as a threat to their funding sources.

  To break through, we had to work very hard. We held community meetings, including a ridiculously expensive lunch for all of the power brokers, and also scheduled numerous meetings with the Board of Education. We brought the chair of the school board, Myrtle Walker, into the effort, which helped immensely. And we addressed the city council. I finally lost my cool when one of the members asked what was in it for me. I was floored and shot back, “Nothing. But there is something in it for your kids. Why are you so hard to help?”

  The experience taught me many tough lessons about the difficulties of community organizing and the power of entrenched interests. I also learned that nonprofit management could be an oxymoron; several of the staff members possessed good hearts but little management skill. But by the summer of 1992 we were able to launch the program for children grades five to eight. Each summer 250 kids were exposed to hands-on math and science instruction, language arts, instrumental music, dance, and art. The curriculum was repeated as an after-school program for 150 kids. We hired the best teachers from the school district and paid them very well, hoping they’d take the innovative curriculum back into their regular classrooms. College students, including many athletes from Stanford, acted as mentors for the kids. The students were chosen on the basis of teacher recommendations, but we were determined that the program not be just for the “talented tenth” or for remedial education. Instead, it was conceived of as an enrichment program. I remember, in particular, one ten-year-old named Oscar. He was not recommended but came to CNG every day. When the teacher told him that he was not a registered Center student, his reply warmed our hearts. “I wasn’t recommended because I am what they call a behavior problem,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be a behavior problem in CNG because it’s fun.” Needless to say, Oscar was admitted the next day.

  The crown jewels of CNG were the instrumental bands: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. The advanced band was very good indeed and became known for its signature song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” After one particularly stirring performance, we found a donor to subsidize all instruments and uniforms. I was in tears, remembering how important bands were to my black heritage in the segregated South. By the way, Oscar turned out to be a terrific trombone player.

  Today there are five Centers for a New Generation spread across East Palo Alto, East Menlo Park, and now heavily Hispanic Redwood City. In 1997, under the leadership of Jackie Glaster, the Centers became programs of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, a strategic partnership that has continued to expand. Whatever our struggles in founding CNG, it was one of the most joyous times of my life. I particularly enjoyed working with Daddy to bring it into being, and I am sure my grandfather John Wesley Rice Sr. noted and approved of the way the experience sparked my own determination to be an educational evangelist. The work was rewarding and exhausting. I once said to Susan that I hoped when we got to St. Peter’s gate, he would look at the ledger and see that we had worked in East Palo Alto in the turbulent 1990s. “Go to the head of the line, my children,” I would expect him to say.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Finding a New President for Stanford

  WITH MY academic research, corporate boards, preparation for teaching, and the activities with the Center, I was very busy. I was increasingly sought out by graduate students from around the country, including Kiron Skinner, a Harvard PhD student who is now a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a close colleague. I also made four trips to Russia, enjoying my freedom to visit the country as a faculty member rather than a government official. These were important visits, as I saw firsthand the disorientation and humiliation of the Russian population after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Years later, that extended time in Russia helped me to understand the appeal of Vladimir Putin, who promised Russians order, prosperity, and respect.

  Like most at Stanford, I was following with some interest the impending change in leadership at the university. The school had gotten into a dispute with the federal government about payments for costs associated with government contracts. It was a headline-grabbing scandal, with charges that Stanford had over-billed the government to the tune of $200 million. Don Kennedy, who for ten years had been the highly successful leader of the university and to whom I had been quite close, decided to step down. The Stanford Report announced that the Board of Trustees had accepted his resignation and would appoint a committee to select the next president.

  I didn’t expect to be appointed to the committee. After all, I’d been away from Stanford three out of the last four years. But one day in September I received a call from Jim Gaither, the chairman of the board. “We need you to help find a new president,” Gaither said. “This is going to be a tough process because the university is really hurting and a lot of people don’t like the direction it has been going in. And I hate to tell you this, but it will take a lot of time
. Will you serve?” I readily accepted. The committee of six faculty members, one student, six trustees, an alumni representative, and one senior administrator was announced a few weeks later.

  John Lillie, representing the Board of Trustees, and Jim Sheehan, a professor of history, served the committee as chair and vice chair. We agreed to meet every week but often met more frequently than that. I hadn’t known how many difficulties Stanford was facing. There had been massive budgetary cuts and layoffs as the federal government slashed payments to the university amid the dispute. Also, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 had left the campus severely damaged, with the four corners of the main quadrangle, the museum, and several other buildings still unusable. The main entrance to the campus, Palm Drive, was one big pothole.

  Moreover, there was a serious rift between conservative alumni and the school. Conservative faculty were also disaffected, feeling that the university was compromising academic excellence in the service of political correctness.

  One of the precipitating events occurred in 1988, when the university had ended the core humanities curriculum, called Western Civilization. Western Civilization had been deemed to be about “dead white men” and therefore unacceptable for a multiethnic, multiracial, multigendered (yes—multigendered) campus. The course had been replaced with Culture, Ideas and Values, also known as CIV, without the offending “Western” preceding it. CIV’s curriculum required race, class, and gender components and at least one book by a “woman of color.”

  The rifts became chasms when Stanford rejected the request of the family of Ronald Reagan to establish his library on campus. Ostensibly, the excuse was traffic congestion at the site, but everyone knew that it had been the agitation of a small but vocal faculty group that forced the university to turn down the library.

  Stanford wasn’t exactly falling apart, but it was a very polarized place. There was even a split concerning intercollegiate athletics, with some saying that the university’s commitment to Division I sports meant a lowering of academic standards. The new president obviously would have a lot of work to do.

  AFTER SEVERAL months, the search committee identified a handful of prospects with the unquestioned academic credentials and administrative experience that would be required of Stanford’s president. Then we took to the road to interview the candidates. No sitting university president or provost wants to be identified as a candidate for a job only to fail to be selected. Thus, we always disguised our travel to avoid leaks about who was being considered.

  Jim Sheehan; Jim Larimore, a Native American assistant dean in Student Affairs; and I were sent to Chicago to interview Gerhard Casper, the provost of the University of Chicago. Gerhard was an eminent constitutional lawyer who had studied at Yale and served as the dean of the Chicago Law School. A German immigrant whose accent was still evident, Gerhard was an intellectual’s intellectual, with refined tastes in architecture and the arts. This was very clear when we walked into his beautifully appointed, early twentieth-century apartment overlooking Lake Shore Drive. I’d never seen so many fine artifacts and books in someone’s living room.

  After about an hour during which Gerhard quizzed us as much as we did him, he turned to me. “You are representative of the next generation of leadership at Stanford,” he said. “What do you think is the greatest challenge?”

  I answered that the university had strayed from its core purposes and was trying to do too much. Across-the-board budget cuts threatened academic programs and social activities almost equally. I used an example from my time in the Pentagon grappling with priority setting. “Whenever you ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff a question about what to cut, the answer is one-third of a tank, one-third of an aircraft, and one-third of a ship. That’s how the university seems to work too. Everything is equal. No one is prepared to make hard choices.”

  “Hm. Very interesting,” he replied.

  As we walked out of Gerhard’s apartment and into the frigid Chicago night, I turned to Jim Sheehan. “I could work for him,” I said.

  The committee deliberated for a few more weeks, but well ahead of schedule we decided that Gerhard Casper was likely the right man to lead Stanford. He came to Los Angeles to meet the committee one last time in secret. There we had a truly open and frank discussion. Gerhard was known as a conservative with very traditional views of the academy. The University of Chicago didn’t even have intercollegiate athletics. We worried that there might be some issues with the fit between this distinguished silver-haired German immigrant and northern California’s informality. I even asked Gerhard if he believed in affirmative action, citing my own case as one that had worked out pretty well. He said that he did, explaining that he believed diversity and excellence were not enemies. After several hours, we were comfortable with our choice. We believed that Gerhard saw Stanford’s unique strengths and that he’d put the university back on course. And he wouldn’t try to make our beloved university into something it didn’t want to be: Harvard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Provost of the University

  GERHARD TOOK the reins in September 1992. Jim Rosse stepped down as provost, and a distinguished member of the engineering faculty, Jerry Lieberman, agreed to serve as interim provost. A committee was appointed to choose a new provost, the second most powerful administrator, responsible for all of the internal operations of the university. I didn’t pay much attention to what they were doing. I was busy with my teaching, writing, and corporate boards. And I had submitted my papers to be promoted to full professor.

  I was friendly with Gerhard and his wife, Regina, seeing them on occasion. He would consult me from time to time about various university matters. I also took it upon myself to make sure Gerhard became intimately acquainted with Stanford sports. When Stanford played the number-one-ranked University of Washington, Gerhard asked me to join him in the president’s box. The game was at night and, with television time-outs, was going on quite long. But Bill Walsh’s Stanford team was somehow still in the game late in the fourth quarter against the heavily favored Huskies. As Stanford took the ball for one last drive for an incomprehensible win, Gerhard turned to me and said, “It’s late. I’m going to go home now.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Gerhard,” I said, taking him by the arm, “if you leave now, your presidency is over.” He was a little startled but stayed. Stanford went on to win as time ran out, and our new president’s reputation for a newfound interest in athletics was preserved.

  Because of our relationship, I didn’t think much of it when my secretary came in to say that Gerhard wanted me to come to lunch that day. The plan was to eat in his office, not at the Faculty Club, as we’d done a couple of times. I asked for tuna salad and cancelled my other appointments. I walked down the hall and told my colleague Chip Blacker that Gerhard wanted to see me. “I suspect that they’ve settled on a candidate for provost and he wants to get my opinion,” I said.

  When I arrived at Building 10, where the president and provost reside, Gerhard and I immediately went into his sunny office and sat across from each other at the round table. After a few pleasantries he said, “I want you to become the provost of the university.”

  I literally dropped my forkful of tuna back into the bowl. “This is a joke, right?”

  His eyes twinkled a bit and he smiled. “No, Condi. I want you to become the provost of the university.”

  Perhaps to give me a moment to recover, he launched into a discussion of why he thought I should be provost. “I’ve decided that it’s time to skip a generation in leadership here at Stanford,” he said, referring obliquely to the numerous deans and department chairs undoubtedly expecting to be named provost. “After your experience in Washington, and having gotten to know you, I think you’re the right person to help me lead Stanford. In fact, I knew it the moment we met in Chicago.”

  Gerhard then addressed my unspoken concern by saying that he was not making the appointment because I was a black woman, although he was delighted that I’d
be the first to hold the job. He added that at thirty-eight, I was also going to be the youngest provost by almost a decade. From his point of view, that would be the real issue, not my race or gender. He could have added that I had never been a department chair, let alone a dean—or he could have mentioned that I’d been promoted to full professor only about a month before.

  The provost of Stanford has broad-ranging responsibilities for the academic program, the physical plant, and the budget. The deans report to the provost, along with most other senior officials of the university. Provosts’ responsibilities vary from university to university, but the Stanford job is probably the most powerful and broadest in all of academia. And these were not ordinary times. Stanford faced crippling challenges, and the provost would be expected to solve them.

  I told Gerhard that I’d think about it overnight and call him the next day. As I made my way back to my office, memories flooded back of walking along the same colonnade as an insecure graduate student going to my first interview so many years before. I knew that I’d say yes and become provost—even though I was still totally stunned to have been asked.

  As soon as I got back to the office I told Chip what Gerhard had wanted. He was equally stunned but said, “You’ll be great.” I made a phone call to my father, who was also flabbergasted but said essentially the same thing, adding a “Wow!” at the end.

  The rest of the day I imagined how the news would be received on campus. Not only was I young, black, and female, I was a Republican on a campus where that is rare. I focused on what messages I wanted to send—to the faculty, the students, the alumni, and the trustees. Then I went home to rest. I was exhausted.