Fried Rice?

The Los Angeles Times has a long article today on Condoleeza Rice’s tenure as provost at Stanford.

I’m not sure whether it’s a failed hatchet job (Note the head and subhead: Not Always Diplomatic in Her First Major Post: Condoleeza Rice, about to become secretary of State, was a divisive figure while at Stanford) or a rare LAT attempt to be fair and balanced that succeeds. Whatever the intent, I believe she comes off looking better than her many quoted Stanford critics.

That is not to say that all her positions at Stanford were appealing. In Stanford’s politically correct, left-leaning culture she was regarded as practically a racial reactionary when in fact her position, according to the LAT, was “nuanced.” (But then, didn’t the LAT think Kerry was nuanced?)

As provost, Rice took a nuanced position on affirmative action, saying she supported special treatment at the time of hiring but not when it came to granting tenure, with its promise of prestige, higher pay and guaranteed job security. Race was a factor to weigh in creating campus diversity, she suggested, but not evaluating job performance.

“I am myself a beneficiary of a Stanford strategy that took affirmative action seriously, that took a risk in taking a young PhD from the University of Denver,” Rice said during a contentious May 1998 meeting of the Faculty Senate, referring to her initial hiring.

Asked at that time why she was departing from the practice of applying affirmative action to tenure decisions, Rice responded, “I’m the chief academic officer now” and firmly restated her position.

Prof. David Kennedy, eminent Stanford historian (and, for what it’s worth, old professor and friend of mine), had this to say:

You can imagine her confronting a State Department culture that will have some similarities to what she presided over here at Stanford. A culture very traditional, very set in its ways, very consensual and consultative in manner,” said David Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

“She’s tremendously smart and quick on the uptake, analytically very gifted,” said Kennedy, who served as Rice’s first boss when she came to Stanford in 1981 to teach political science. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if, despite that veneer of utter graciousness, in practice she doesn’t cut against the grain of the State Department culture to some degree.”

I certainly hope so.

Say What?