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Madeleine Albright to Keynote New Orleans Conference

Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has agreed to keynote the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, next June 22–28 in New Orleans, the Association revealed November 14.

Albright was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, moved to the U.S. in 1948, and became a citizen in 1957. She became American ambassador to the United Nations in 1993 and 64th secretary of state in 1997 during the Clinton presidency. A controversial and at times polarizing figure in American politics, Albright has been celebrated by some as the most successful female politician in American history and vilified by detractors for her support of U.S. sanctions against Iraq and her role in the Kosovo and Bosnian wars.

The location of the ALA conference, scheduled for New Orleans years in advance, was in question until the Association’s Executive Board concluded in October that the city would be sufficiently recovered from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to host the conference. Albright negotiated with ALA to make to make the conference part of a promotional tour for her forthcoming book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and the World, to be published next May by HarperCollins.

Posted November 15, 2005.

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