Susan Rice - Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For

Susan Rice - Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For

Wednesday, Oct 23, 2019 7:00 PM

Location:
Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech
349 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332

Susan E. Rice, National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, recalls pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy.

Rice will discuss her memoir "Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For" with Stacey Abrams, 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, former Georgia House Democratic Leader, and founder and chair of Fair Fight.

Tickets are $48 for Orchestra seating and $36 for Mezzanine seating. Each ticket includes a copy of the book signed by the author.

If you are unable to attend, you may pre-order a signed copy of the book here:

About the Book

Although you may think you know Susan Rice—whose name became synonymous with Benghazi following her Sunday news show appearances after the deadly 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya—in "Tough Love," the author reveals the truth of her surprising story with unflinching honesty. Often mischaracterized by political opponents, Rice emerges as neither a villain nor victim, but a strong, compassionate leader.

Mother, wife, scholar, diplomat, and fierce champion of American interests and values, Rice connects the personal and the professional. Taught early, with tough love, how to compete and excel as an African American woman in settings where people of color are few, Susan shares wisdom learned along the way.

Laying bare the family struggles that shaped her early life in Washington, D.C., she also examines the ancestral legacies that influenced her. Rice’s elders—immigrants on one side and descendants of slaves on the other—had high expectations that each generation would rise. And rise they did, but not without paying it forward—in uniform and in the pulpit, as educators, community leaders, and public servants.

Susan too rose rapidly. She served throughout the Clinton administration, becoming one of the nation’s youngest assistant secretaries of state and, later, one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors.

Rice provides an insider’s account of some of the most complex issues confronting the United States over three decades, ranging from “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia to the genocide in Rwanda and the East Africa embassy bombings in the late 1990s, to Libya, Syria, a secret channel to Iran, the Ebola epidemic, and the opening to Cuba during the Obama years. With unmatched insight and characteristic bluntness, she reveals previously untold stories behind recent national security challenges, including confrontations with Russia and China, the war against ISIS, the struggle to contain the fallout from Edward Snowden’s leaks, the U.S. response to Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the surreal transition to the Trump administration.

Intimate, sometimes humorous, but always candid, "Tough Love" culminates with an appeal to the American public to bridge our dangerous domestic divides in order to preserve our democracy and sustain our global leadership.

About Susan E. Rice

Ambassador Susan E. Rice is currently Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She serves on the board of Netflix and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and previously served on several nonprofit boards, including the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Rice earned her master’s degree and doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and her B.A. from Stanford University. A native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of the National Cathedral School for Girls, she is married to Ian Cameron; they have two children. Rice is an avid tennis player and long-retired basketball player.

About Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Minority Leader, in 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, when she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States. After witnessing the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election by the Secretary of State’s office, Abrams launched Fair Fight to ensure every Georgian has a voice in our election system. Over the course of her career, Abrams has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress. Abrams has also written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Salena Montgomery, in addition to "Lead from the Outside," formerly "Minority Leader," a guidebook on making real change.

Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School. She and her five siblings grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and were raised in Georgia.