‘Know your facts’: A conversation with Condoleezza Rice

The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis

"I teach simulations a lot, because it allows students to take on a problem as a policymaker would take it on.” -- Condoleezza Rice

(Student Life) -- Although Rice has transitioned back and forth between working in government and academia, she sees the two fields as being interconnected. While working in government, Rice approached many issues she faced through an academic lens.

“I started out as a traditional political scientist, and then I went into government; I came back, and I went in again,” Rice said. “And I think that I am able to use the framework of an academic to structure issues that I’m looking at. Even when I was in government, I tended to do that.”

On the other hand, when teaching political science, Rice encourages students to look beyond that academic framework in order to account for the many factors that play into what she referred to as “the chaos of decision making.”

“It’s definitely helpful to think about, for instance, causal relationships and what caused what,” Rice said. “But when you’re in the policy-making environment, the time pressures and the problems of insufficient, if not inaccurate, information, the problems of so many actors that have to be brought into the process–it’s different than the way we teach a very structured decision-making process. So one of the things I do in my classes is I teach simulations a lot, because it allows students to take on a problem as a policymaker would take it on.”

Read more: http://www.studlife.com/scene/2019/04/21/know-your-facts-a-conversation-with-condoleezza-rice/