Condoleezza Rice offers education as inspiration during SMU commencement speech

By Allison Wisk

There were many variables in Condoleezza Rice’s life as she grew from a young Alabama girl in the wake of Jim Crow into the first black female secretary of state.

But one constant guided her development: education.

“Education is transformative; it literally changes lives,” said Rice, the speaker at Southern Methodist University’s 97th commencement ceremony Saturday.

“That is why people work so hard to become educated, and that is why education has always been the key to human beings and their dreams.”

Rice, now chairwoman of the board of advisers of the Bush Institute of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, gave the final graduation speech at the aging Moody Coliseum before it undergoes a $40 million renovation.

She also received received an honorary doctorate of laws from the school.

Now on the faculty at Stanford University, where she was once provost, Rice shared the false starts in her own academic career....