Madeleine Albright to be honored by world leaders, DC elite

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Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright funeral held in Washington

The funeral for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is being held at Washington National Cathedral, where President Biden is expected to speak.

World leaders and a bevy of U.S. political and foreign policy elite are preparing to pay their respects to the late Madeleine Albright, the child refugee from war-torn Europe who rose to become America’s first female secretary of state.

Led by President Joe Biden and predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, the man who picked Albright to be his top diplomat and the highest-ranking woman ever in the U.S. government at that time, some 1,400 mourners will gather Wednesday to celebrate her life and accomplishments at Washington National Cathedral.

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Albright, 84, died of cancer last month, prompting an outpouring of condolences from around the world that also hailed her support for democracy and human rights. In addition to the current and former presidents, the service will be attended by at least three of her successors as secretary of state, along with other current and former Cabinet members, foreign diplomats, lawmakers and an array of others who knew her.

Biden, who delivered a tribute to Albright, said her name was synonymous with the idea that America is "a force for good in the world."

President Joe Biden, left, former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during the funeral service for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Washington National Cathedral, Wednesday, April 27, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP)

"In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright," Biden said. "Today we honor a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans."

Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also were scheduled to deliver tributes at the service, while the current secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and former secretaries Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry were slated to attend. Other top current officials expected to be present included Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA Director Bill Burns, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Mark Milley and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The members of the VIP audience were masked, as Albright's family had requested.

Foreign dignitaries slated to attend include the presidents of Georgia and Kosovo and senior officials from Colombia, Bosnia and the Czech Republic.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright smiles at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington on May 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Albright was born in what was then Czechoslovakia but her family fled twice, first from the Nazis and then from Soviet rule. They ended up in the United States, where she studied at Wellesley College and rose through the ranks of Democratic Party foreign policy circles to become ambassador to the United Nations. Clinton selected her as secretary of state in 1996 for his second term.

Although never in line for the presidency because of her foreign birth, Albright was near universally admired for breaking a glass ceiling, even by her political detractors.

As a Czech refugee who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain, she was not a dove. She played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get involved militarily in the conflict in Kosovo. "My mindset is Munich," she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.

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As secretary of state, Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. As U.N. ambassador, she advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevic’s treatment of Bosnia. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was eventually dubbed "Madeleine’s War."

She also took a hard line on Cuba, famously saying at the United Nations that the 1996 Cuban shootdown of a civilian plane was not "cojones" but rather "cowardice."

In 2012, Obama awarded Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.

Former President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on May 29, 2012. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague on May 15, 1937, she was the daughter of a diplomat, Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and converted to Roman Catholicism when she was 5. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.

Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London.

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After the war, as the Soviet Union took over vast chunks of Eastern Europe, her father brought the family to the United States. They settled in Denver, where her father taught at the University of Denver. One of Korbel’s best students was Rice, who would later succeed his daughter as secretary of state.

Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist and later studied international relations at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1976. She then entered politics and what was at the time the male-dominated world of foreign policy professionals.