--- title: 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice | TIME description: Her family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People, has just come out. Condoleezza Rice will now take your questions. canonical: https://time.com/video/8vVrcvEd/ og:title: 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice og:description: Her family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People, has just come out. Condoleezza Rice will now take your questions. og:url: https://time.com/video/8vVrcvEd/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8vVrcvEd/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice twitter:description: Her family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People, has just come out. Condoleezza Rice will now take your questions. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/8vVrcvEd/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8vVrcvEd.m3u8) (6:30)  _Published 2010-10-18. Her family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People, has just come out. Condoleezza Rice will now take your questions._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:06 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Condoleezza Rice: Higher Education Must Encourage Creativity](/video/DNjwKrOS/) ### Condoleezza Rice: Higher Education Must Encourage Creativity [10 Questions for Susan Rice](/video/RGnSZWCN/) ### 10 Questions for Susan Rice [10 Questions for Anne Rice](/video/GftJRo7D/) ### 10 Questions for Anne Rice --- ## Transcript >> I'm Michael Duffy of TIME Magazine. I'm joined here today by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who just got a new book, Extraordinary Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family. I've read it. It's a lot of fun to read and we're gonna talk to her today both-- a few questions of my own and a bunch from our readers. So, thank you for joining us here. >> Nice to be with you. >> Thank you. Okay. My first question is from Bad Honnef, Germany. And he said how does an African- American woman from Birmingham, Alabama, with a family background in church and art become an academic expert, and more than that, on the Soviet Union? >> That's why I wanted to write this book, I say, in order to know who I am and how I became who I am, you have to know John and Angelena Rice, my parents. And they simply believed that my horizon ought to be limitless. When I suddenly went home in college and said, Mom and Dad, I want to be a Soviet specialist, they said, well, that's good, dear. You go after it. And so, I think it's really a story of not believing that there were limits of race and gender despite the fact that in Birmingham, Alabama, there were clearly limits of race. >> All right. >> And some of these limits of race and gender were not ones you had talked about before as far as I know in any great detail. >> Right. >> A little bit of the convention in 2000 and 2004, but no in this kind of detail in the past. >> Well, I wanted people to understand what it was like to grow up in Birmingham, Alabama, a place where you couldn't have a hamburger at the Woolworths' lunch counter, but had parents and a community that really did believe you could be president of the United States if you wanted to be. But I thought it was important to vivify what Birmingham was really like in 1959 or 1960. It's something that now seems quite far in our past, but it's really not very long ago. >> It was quite real. You went to college not really sure what you wanted to be when you grew up. And as you hinted a minute ago, you came to Soviet Studies, which is what they were called in those days, after a few other stops along the way. >> I came in quite a secure route to Soviet Studies. And when I went to college, I was going to be a concert pianist. And after a little time at the Aspen Music Festival School and the realization that I was going to end up teaching kids to murder Beethoven or maybe playing a piano bar some place, I had to find another line of work. And fortunately for me, I took a course in International Politics taught by a Soviet specialist, the man who is in fact Madeleine Albright's father, Joseph Korbelová, and all of the sudden I thought that's what I wanna do. I wanna study Russia and international politics. Certainly not something a girl from Birmingham, Albama-- a black girl from Birmingham, Alabama- >> Uh- huh. >> would have been expected to do, but I found my passion. >> On to some of the foreign policy questions. Tyler Park of Davis, California, asks the question, kind of a lot. In your opinion, is there a realistic long- term solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict? You worked on it a great deal. If such-- If such a deal is possible, what might it look like as far as we can tell? >> There has to be a solution to this and there's only one solution, a two- state solution, a Palestinian state in which Palestinians can govern themselves, living side by side in democracy and peace with Israel. And I do think there's a realistic prospect. The Palestinians particularly in the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are governing themselves much better than in any other time in Palestinian history. The economy is growing. The security forces are good. You can see what a Palestinian state would look like. >> All right. >> Of course, they're gonna have to divide the land. They're gonna have to have a solution for Jerusalem that recognizes both people's rights to the claim of Jerusalem, but this can be done and hopefully can be done fairly soon. >> Chimezie Onyebilanma of Durban, South Africa, asks, how do you evaluate the present state of democracy in Africa? That's a big question obviously. >> It's going to be helpful if democracy in the big states, South Africa, where they've had this four elections or Nigeria where the elections have been troubled, but where they're gonna have another chance. If those bigger states can now get on this trend of better governance, fighting corruption, the kind of leadership you have in Liberia where after years of civil war you have a strong president who is doing the right things, I'm actually more optimistic about the future of Africa because I think people-- leaders there are finally understanding that it's the responsibility to govern wisely and to govern democratically. >> Do you have any regrets about your stint in the government? Something you wish you would have done different or sooner at that time, which of course you can't do over now. >> Well, of course, you know, when you are in a very complicated time as we were, there are many things that you might have done better. Certainly, in Iraq, I would again take out Saddam Hussein. He was a cancer in the region, but I think we probably should have tried to build Iraq from the outside in rather than centralizing so much of the effort in Baghdad. I think we didn't understand so well the role of the provinces and-- >> More decentralized. >> A more decentralized way. We got it right finally in 2007, 2008, but I think I would do that differently. But you know the one thing that I wish we've been able to get was comprehensive reform? I think there was a chance when the Vicente Fox was President of Mexico and George W. Bush, they've both been governors and wanted to do something. And sadly, when you have an immigration reform bill that John McCain, George W. Bush, and Ted Kennedy all want to pass and you can't get it through, you know how hard this issue is. >> Okay. The last question. I promise last question. An easy on. Ayssa Green from Fredericksburg, Virginia, asks, what is your favorite to play on the piano? >> Well, my favorite piece to play on the piano is, of course, Brahms, my favorite composer and it's the Opus 118, the second intermezzo from the Opus 118, which is a wonderful collection of piano pieces, but I hope that before I leave this earth my favorite piece to play will be the Brahms Second Piano Concerto, but I've gotta get in a little bit better shape to play that when-- >> Well, I know you've always been someone who had goals and usually accomplish them, so I'm sure you'll get this. Well, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> This has been great and thank you all for your questions. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for Condoleezza Rice","description":"Her family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People, has just come out. 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