LITERATURE + LECTURES

The World Affairs Council of Houston presents the Dillon Anderson Lecture on National Security - National Security Council: The Office, Its People, and Our Challenges.  Featuring Condoleezza Rice, (pictured) 66th Secretary of State, Stanford University.

World War II and the Cold War intensified the need for the president to have people on his direct staff to help him with defense, intelligence, and diplomacy. Created in 1947, The National Security Council coordinated reports and proposals from the operating departments. Under the last 12 presidents, its use and organization has varied, sometimes mixing staff and operating roles. Condoleezza Rice will discuss the Council’s work, its relation to other agencies, and its responsiveness to America’s challenges.

Condoleezza Rice
Before serving as our 66th Secretary of State, Doctor Rice had been the National Security Advisor. During the dissolution of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany, she was the Senior Director of Soviet and East European Affairs in the Security Council. She has been a special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

At Stanford University, she was a professor of political science and provost. She has written several books, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era with Alexander Dallin; and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army. Doctor Rice has returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and to the Hoover Institution as the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She has earned degrees from the Universities of Alabama, Denver, and Notre Dame. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama.

Dillon Anderson
Dillon Anderson, statesman and writer, earned a bachelor of science at the University of Oklahoma and a law degree from Yale. In 1929, and joined Baker, Botts, Andrews, and Shepherd in Houston. In World War Two, Anderson was a colonel in the United States Army. After having been a consultant to the National Security Council for two years, President Eisenhower chose Anderson to be his assistant for national security in 1955.

Anderson presided over the National Security Council and accompanied Eisenhower to the summit conference in Geneva in 1955. He returned to Houston in 1956. Anderson won O. Henry prize for short fiction and wrote three novels. Anderson was a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.