Scope and Content Note
The papers of Madeleine Korbel Albright (1937-2022) span the years 1925-2015, with the bulk of the material dating from 1961 to 2001. The collection focuses on Albright's life and career as a diplomat and foreign policy expert, particularly her service as a National Security Council staff member, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and the first female Secretary of State. Her work as foreign policy advisor to presidential and vice-presidential candidates and as a university professor are also documented. The papers are organized into eight series: Carter Administration, United Nations, Department of State, Political File, Speeches and Writings, Subject File, Classified, and Oversize. The papers are in English, Czech, and Polish.
The Carter Administration series focuses on Albright’s work as congressional liaison on the staff of the National Security Council, from 1978-1981, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The files document actions taken to promote the foreign policy of that period. Issues, events, and policies covered include arms transfer to the Middle East, a China trade agreement, the Taiwan Relations Act, foreign aid, the Panama Canal, efforts to secure ratification of the SALT II treaty, and the response to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. Albright's memoranda to National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other working papers provide further details of her activities and contacts with members of congress regarding foreign policy issues and legislation. In later years Albright used a number of the issues and events from this period as case studies in classes she taught at Georgetown University. Carter-era National Security Council documents used as resource material are part of her Georgetown University teaching files in the Subject File series.
The United Nations series contains files relating to Albright’s tenure as the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations from 1993-1997. While substantive working papers are not present, schedules, protocol files on events, press coverage of trips and topics, media interviews, and texts of speeches and remarks provide details of the nature of Albright's work, her meetings with foreign ministers and world leaders, and the major foreign policy issues she dealt with during the first term of the Clinton administration. Other items include a small grouping of correspondence, guest books, comic books created to teach landmine awareness, and invitations, programs, and other items she saved from events, some of which are signed by participants, are filed in a personal memorabilia section.
The Department of State series focuses on Albright’s tenure as Secretary of State during Clinton’s second term. Files relating to her nomination and confirmation as the first female secretary of state include letters of congratulations from diplomats and foreign leaders as well as from women who were proud of this milestone for women in government. Albright's extensive travels to all parts of the world are documented in a chronological grouping of trips and events files that contain planning documents, itineraries, schedules, press releases, and texts of remarks and in a file on travel schedules and statistics. These files, as well as daily schedules, calendars, and press coverage for the year 2000, provide details on world affairs and the foreign policy issues and crises she addressed in this period. There are no substantive working files relating to the meetings, negotations, and diplomatic visits mentioned. Other materials include a correspondence file, an attire log that records the outfits that Albright wore to events, and a grouping of personal memorabilia such as programs and dinner menus signed by attendees at the events, and artork drawn by children in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1997.
Albright’s efforts as a foreign policy advisor to Democratic candidates in the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns are documented in the Political File series. She advised both Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro on foreign policy issues during the 1984 campaign. Materials from that campaign include briefing books and policy papers on foreign policy issues, speeches and statements by both candidates, debate preparation material, and details on foreign policy themes. The largest portion of this series pertains to the Michael S. Dukakis campaign for president in 1988 and includes briefing materials and policy papers, daily faxes of memoranda, schedules and other working papers relating to foreign policy, statements on issues, debate preparation, information on the Democratic Party platform, and press clippings. Also included here are a small number of digital files relating to debate preparation and letters sent to issue experts and volunteers, and other interested parties. Another portion of this series pertains to Edmund S. Muskie’s 1972 presidential campaign as well as his Senate re-election campaign in 1976 where Albright was a member of his campaign committee. A small number of Albright's foreign policy memoranda and Albright's notes on the Democratic Platform Committee during Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 are also filed here.
A small Speeches and Writings series contains articles and other writings, speeches and remarks, and testimony, primarily written prior to the Albright’s service in the Clinton administration. Many of the articles, papers, and speeches date from 1990-1992 and focus on the changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe during this period. Other writings include Albright’s doctoral dissertation, "The Role of the Press in Political Change: Czechoslovakia, 1968" (Columbia University, 1976), and drafts of her 1983 book, Poland, the Role of the Press in Political Change.
The Subject File is comprised of files pertaining to other aspects of Madeleine Albright’s life and activities, including her graduate training at Columbia University, her years as a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and director of its Women in Foreign Service Program, her service on boards of directors, and a number of research projects. Albright’s Georgetown University teaching files include lecture notes, and resource material for case studies used in courses on aspects of international relations. Her foreign policy work for the Democratic Party is documented here as well as in the Political File series. Files relating to Albright's research project on the role of the press at a time of political change in Poland that she undertook during her fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars from 1981-1982 include her notes and press coverage of events in Poland from Poland and the United States. The manuscript for the book that resulted from this project is filed in the Speeches and Writings series. A personal file section contains her school report cards as well as notes and letters from Aung Sun Suu Kyi, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Václav Havel, and a number of individuals who served as secretaries of state. The section of the series pertaining to the Times Mirror Center for People & the Press's 1991 "Pulse of Europe" survey on post-Cold War attitudes of Europeans conducted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Soviet republics has no access restrictions and is open to researchers.