In new center, Albright sees promise for diplomacy

By Ben Terris, Globe Correspondent

WELLESLEY — With Wellesley College already the alma mater of two of the nation’s three female secretaries of state, trailblazer Madeleine Albright hopes a new institute at the college created in her honor will pave the way for more.

‘‘I don’t want to say women necessarily make better diplomats than men,’’ Albright said in an interview Saturday, returning to Wellesley for her 50th reunion and to announce the creation of the Madeleine K. Albright Institute for Global Affairs.

‘‘But in a lot of ways we do have advantages. Diplomacy is about being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes, to be able to empathize, figure out their perspective. At the risk of making a gross generalization, women are often much better at that.’’

Albright said she hopes the institute, which will begin classes in January and admit about 40 students, will produce graduates who become diplomats and international leaders. The program will begin with a series of guest lecturers, the last of whom will be Albright, followed by summer internships both here and abroad.

‘‘Wellesley’s commitment to international education is both timely and bold,’’ Albright said in a speech Saturday to hundreds of alumni and families. ‘‘The subject is an elementary but vital role for education in the 21st century. We cannot prepare students for a life without making aware the hopes and thoughts of counterparts.’’

Albright became the first female secretary of state in 1997, serving in that post until 2001. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is also a Wellesley graduate.

While most people speak of diplomacy as a game of chess, Albright, whose liberal education at Wellesley taught her the importance of interconnectedness, said she thinks it’s closer to billiards.

“Diplomacy and billiards are rooted in the idea that everything is connected,” Albright said in her interview with the Globe. “A lot of people come to the table hoping to get the ball to the other side, but you can’t do that without knocking around all the other balls. Energy and the environment, health and migration flows, land and violence, you can’t hit one without knocking another.”

In a time of American involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as mounting tensions with Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea, the fear of nuclear proliferation, global pandemics, climate change, and financial woes, Albright believes that increased attention to international education is “elementary and vital” in creating a generation of people equipped to deal with these issues.

“Wellesley has always been great about being multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, and this institute will continue with these values,” she said in the interview. “What happens in a lot of colleges is that they are put in silos and if you are a political science major you might not spend enough time thinking about health policy and religion.”

Speaking to the crowd at Wellesley, Albright talked about how far the institution and the country have come in becoming global entities.

“Our horizons were much more limited than they are today,” she said. “We cared about the issues of war and peace, but we didn’t know as much as we should about people who lived elsewhere. ... We need leaders also educators, guide global marketplace of ideas, people everywhere look beyond the borders of their own lives.”

Recalling members of Congress who “only a decade ago bragged about not having a passport,” Albright said that Americans can pretend to live in a world where their ideas go unchallenged, but in reality “We don’t live on an island of adolescent dreams.”