Remarks at the Open Plenary of the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education

SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. Well, good morning and thank you again for making the effort to come and join us for this Summit.

I can't think of any better way to open the Summit than hearing from our Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and there are a lot of reasons for that. Margaret is obviously my colleague; she's also, however, my friend. We have worked together at the White House when she was Domestic Policy Advisor and I was National Security Advisor. She generously let me kibitz on higher education issues so that I could continue to express views about issues that are very important to me personally. And I appreciate that, Margaret, and I hope that it was useful.

Our cooperation in hosting this Summit is a kind of natural outgrowth of what has been a terrific working relationship and one that I think is based on a common concern for the role of education in America and the role of higher education in the world. And so I look forward to much further work with our distinguished Secretary of Education.

I want to note one other thing. Margaret, I believe, is the first Secretary of Education to actually have kids who are trying to take advantage of the educational system, including the higher educational system. And I'm told that you, with your college-aged student, spent a lot of time talking about how she might study abroad. So, Margaret comes at this not only as a student of the study of higher education, as a practitioner in Texas who has been really instrumental in shaping the tremendous -- having tremendous influence on the President who has been very influential and has cared a great deal about education, but Margaret comes at this also as a parent.

And so, Margaret, thank you very much for your leadership on this issue. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for opening our Summit.

(Applause.)

2006/19