Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. will be the featured speaker at Siena’s Commencement ceremonies on Sunday, May 30.
Siena will host a ceremony that complies with capacity regulations at the Times Union Center in Albany.
Details about event times, ticketing and more are currently being determined, and will be announced as soon as possible. Please check in at siena.edu/commencement, which will be updated as new information becomes available. Other Commencement-related activities, including the awarding of master’s degrees, will be held on campus.
Rice will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Siena. Due to COVID travel restrictions, she will prepare a video address to be shared at the Times Union Center.
“Siena College has been working hard over the past year to rise to the moment in which the country finds itself -- endeavoring to strengthen the bonds of racial justice on our campus while preparing students to be engaged citizens in a country that needs to restore the social fabric so critical to a flourishing republic,” said Siena President Chris Gibson ’86, Ph.D. “Dr. Rice was chosen as our Commencement speaker to reflect both of these priorities: the remarkable and amazing life she has lived overcoming searing challenges, and the superb scholarship she has produced on how democracies can survive and flourish in the face of the polarizing international influences bent on undermining our confidence to be self-governing.”
Rice, who served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2009, was the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. She also served as national security advisor from 2001 to 2005, the first woman to hold the position.
She is currently director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and its senior fellow on public policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
Rice served as Stanford’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As a professor of political science, Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors – the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
She has authored and co-authored numerous books, most recently To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth (2019), co-authored with Philip Zelikow. Among her other volumes are three bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010).
She currently serves on the boards of Dropbox, Inc., an online storage technology company; C3.ai, an AI software company; and Makena Capital Management, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and a trustee of the Aspen Institute.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice holds three degrees in political science: her bachelor's from the University of Denver; her master’s from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
