Madeleine Korbel Albright (lahir di Praha, Cekoslovakia, 15 Mei 1937; umur 77 tahun), diplomat Amerika Serikat, adalah Sekretaris Negara AS ke-64. Dirayakan sebagai Menteri Luar Negeri AS wanita pertama dan wanita dengan pangkat tertinggi dalam sejarah pemerintahan AS, Albright juga telah dikritik dengan tajam karena dukungan kuatnya untuk rezim sanksi terhadap Irak.Dia adalah duta besar untuk Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa. Dia mulai pada tanggal 6 Februari 1993. Albright telah dikritik secara luas untuk komentarnya dalam sebuah wawancara pada 12 Mei 1996 dalam program televisi 60 Minutes. Dalam topik mengenai sanksi AS terhadap Irak, Lesley Stahl bertanya: Kita telah mendengar bahwa setengah juta anak-anak telah meninggal. Itu lebih dari jumlah anak-anak yang tewas di Hiroshima. Apakah ini suatu harga yang pantas dibayar? Albright menjawab: Saya rasa ini adalah suatu pilihan yang sulit, namun hal tersebut -- kami rasa ia merupakan harga yang pantas dibayar.
Menteri Luar Negeri AS - Dia mulai pada tanggal 23 Januari 1997. Sebagai Menteri Luar Negeri, Albright memicu kemarahan banyak warga Serbia di Yugoslavia karena perannya dalam Perang Kosovo dan Perang Bosnia serta kebijakan AS di daerah Balkan secara keseluruhan. Pasa 2000, Albright menjadi diplomat Barat pertama yang bertemu dengan Kim Jong Il, pemimpin Korea Utara. Albright terlahir dengan nama Marie Jana Korbel pada 15 Mei 1937 di Praha, Cekoslovakia. Madeleine adalah nama panggilan yang diberikan neneknya. Dia pindah ke Amerika Serikat pada 1950 dan menjadi warga negara AS pada 1957. Pada Mei 1959 dia menikah dengan jurnalis surat kabar Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, dan mempunyai tiga putri. Mereka bercerai pada 1982.
Albright sangat multilingual; dia fasih berbahasa Inggris, Perancis, dan Ceko, dengan kemampuan berbicara dan membaca yang baik dalam bahasa Rusia, Jerman, dan Polandia. Sebelum dan saat Perang Dunia II, ayahnya Josef Korbel dan keluarganya mengungsi di Belgrade, Yugoslavia, di mana mereka berada dalam misi diplomatik dari Cekoslovakia. Hal ini mungkin telah menyelamatkan nyawanya, ketika banyak dari saudara Yahudinya di Cekoslovakia yang terbunuh dalam Holocaust. Albright telah menyatakan bahwa dia tidak mengetahui bahwa dia adalah seorang Yahudi hingga dia dewasa. Setelah pensiun, Albright menerbitkan sebuah memoir, Madam Secretary (2003) ISBN 0-7868-6843-0.
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbel on May 15, 1937) is a Czech-born American politician and diplomat. She is the first woman to have become the United States Secretary of State. She was nominated by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997. Albright currently serves as a professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and numerous honorary degrees. In May 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama. Secretary Albright also serves as a director on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Albright is fluent in English, French, Russian, and Czech; she speaks and reads Polish and Serbo-Croatian as well.
Madeleine Jana Korbel was born in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia[6] to Czech diplomat Josef Korbel and Anna Spieglova. At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than twenty years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Josef was a supporter of the early Czech democrats Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Madeleine grew up with a younger sister named Katherine (a schoolteacher) and a younger brother named John (an economist). At the time of her birth, Josef was serving as press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. However, the signing of the Munich Agreement in March 1938 and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia at the hands of Adolf Hitler forced the family into exile because of their links with Beneš. Prior to their flight, Josef and Anna had converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
Albright spent the war years in Britain, while her father worked for Beneš’s Czechoslovak government-in-exile. They first lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London, where they endured the worst of the Blitz, but later moved to Beaconsfield, then Walton-on-Thames, on the outskirts of London.[10] She lived in Walton-on-Thames throughout the Second World War, and later reminisced about the constant presence of a large metal table in the house, to protect the family from the recurring threat of Nazi bomb attacks. While in England, a young Albright appeared as a refugee child in a film designed to promote sympathy for all war refugees in London. Albright was raised Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism at the time of her marriage in 1959. She did not learn until adulthood that her parents were originally Jewish and that many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia had perished in the Holocaust, including three of her grandparents.
