Karen Hughes

Karen Parfitt Hughes (born December 27, 1956) is the Global Vice Chair of Burson-Marsteller. She served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of State with the rank of ambassador. She resides in Austin, Texas.

Early life

Born in Paris, France, she is the daughter of Patricia Rose Scully and Harold Parfitt, the last U.S. Governor of the Panama Canal Zone. After graduating from W. T. White High School, Hughes received her bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University in 1977 where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. She worked as a television news reporter from 1977 to 1984. As a reporter, Hughes followed the 1980 presidential campaign. In 1984, she went to work as the Texas press coordinator for the Reagan-Bush campaign in the 1984 election. She later became executive director of the Republican Party of Texas.

Work with George W. Bush

Since 1994, Hughes has worked with George W. Bush, first as director of his campaign for the office of governor of Texas, and then as a from 2001 to 2002, while he was President of the United States.

Hughes left the Bush administration in July 2002 to return to Texas, but remained in daily contact with the Bush reelection campaign by telephone and e-mail, and spoke personally with Bush several times a week. In August 2004, Hughes returned to full-time service with the Bush campaign, setting up office on Air Force One, from where she planned the 2004 Republican National Convention and the late stages of the 2004 election. She has been decorated by The Dallas Morning News as "the most powerful woman ever to serve in the White House", and by ABC News as Bush's "most essential advisor."

Ten Minutes from Normal

In March 2004, Hughes published Ten Minutes from Normal, an account of her decision to leave the White House. While promoting her book, she appeared on CNN on April 25, 2004 - the same day as the March for Women's Lives - and said "I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy

George Bush (C) and United States National Security Advisor and United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R).]] On March 14, 2005, Bush announced his intention to nominate Hughes for the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy with the rank of ambassador — a job focused on changing foreigners' perceptions about America. The Senate confirmed her nomination in July 2005.

In her new capacity, Hughes spoke of improving the world's perception of the United States via creation of a "rapid-response unit" and a plan to "forward-deploy regional SWAT teams". During a town hall meeting on September 8, 2005, a State Department employee complained that "recently, we've had tremendous amount of difficulty in some cases getting clearance for our ambassadors to speak." Hughes replied, "If they make statements based on something I sent them, they're not going to be called on the carpet."

At the end of her tenure in the State Department, Hughes said that one of her greatest accomplishments had been "transforming public diplomacy and making it a national security priority central to everything we do in government". Hughes was the keynote speaker at the October 22, 2007 Public Relations Society of America's International Conference and discussed, "Waging Peace -- The New Paradigm for Public Diplomacy."

2005 tour of the Middle East

Starting with a September 26, 2005 stop in Egypt, Hughes went on a "listening tour" of the Middle East to speak with leaders and people from the region. This was a response to growing fears in America about rampant anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Hughes was the third person chosen for this task by President Bush, following unsuccessful attempts by Charlotte Beers and Margaret Tutwiler. For her tour, Hughes asked two Citizen Ambassadors to accompany her. Following an apparently non-selective process, Hughes chose a college student, Tina Karima Daoud, and William O'Brien, a retired high school geography teacher, as the first two Citizen Ambassadors. In her press briefing, Hughes detailed the process by which Ms. Daoud was added to the tour: "I have brought along with me on this trip, as a symbol of things to come, two citizens, one a young Muslim American, Tina Karima who met the very first week in my office when I asked to meet with a group of Muslim students from universities in the Washington area, and she came to that meeting and she followed up and sent me an email and said she was really interested in some of the things I said and could we have lunch? So we had lunch and I talked with her and learned more about her, and discovered that she was already working at the State Department on a small project -- she could tell you exactly what it was -- a fellowship project, but it was in something like -- it was very administrative. And so I said maybe we could get her to come help us with public diplomacy, and so she in fact is now working with us on public diplomacy on that fellowship and is traveling with us on this trip, but I think it's - to show again the importance of our own American young people reaching out to young people across the world, which I hope to foster more of."

On her September 27 stop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during a talk with female students, she expressed her wish that women could "fully participate in society" as they do in the United States. In response one of the women said "The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn't happy [...] Well, we're all pretty happy.".

In a press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia Hughes incorrectly stated that Saddam Hussein "had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas." Conventional sources attest that Saddam did order the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqis during the al-Anfal Campaign and other violent suppressions, but causalties from his infamous gas attack on Halabja numbered in the thousands.

Breast cancer research advocacy

Hughes met business representatives from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to create the U.S.-U.A.E. Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research.

It will develop breast cancer awareness campaigns and expand research in the Middle East by linking U.S. medical experts, fundraisers, health research activists and businesses with their U.A.E. counterparts.

Resignation

In late October 2007, Hughes made it known that she would be resigning from her position in the Bush White House. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying she accepted the resignation "with a great deal of sadness but also a great deal of happiness for what she has achieved".

Hughes is currently the Vice Chairman of Burson-Marsteller, a major public relations company.

Footnotes

References

# Rootsweb.com. Record on Karen (Parfitt) Hughes. # Kerry Lauerman. You burn out fast when you demagogue, Salon.com, September 13, 2003. # Interview of Karen Hughes. Transcript of Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN.com, Aired April 5, 2004. # Dana Milbank. Hughes is Varnishing the Nation's Tarnish, The Washington Post, September 9, 2005. # Transcript of Interview of Bob Garfield. Scuttle Diplomacy, On the Media, June 1, 2007. # U.S. Department of State Transcript. Briefing En Route Ankara, Turkey. September 26, 2005 # Steven R. Weisman. Saudi Women Have Message for U.S. Envoy, New York Times, September 28, 2005. # Alan Sipress. Hughes Misreports Iraqi History, Washington Post, October 22, 2005. # Elizabeth Kelleher. State's Hughes Joins Dubai Businesswomen To Fight Breast Cancer, U.S. Department of State, November 1, 2006. # USME Partnership for Breast Cancer Awareness and Research. US Middle East Partnership Website.

External links

Special Report on Karen Hughes' nomination to Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy

USC Center on Public Diplomacy Wiki profile on Hughes and her new position

Testimony at confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC (July 22, 2005)

Marketing America (March 16, 2005) PBS Online NewsHour featuring Karen Hughes.

Profile: Karen Hughes, SourceWatch

Karen Hughes and the collapse of American public diplomacy

Karen Hughes Addresses PRSA

Karen Hughes on 'Meet the Press' (July 12, 2009)

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:Ambassadors of the United States Category:American political consultants Category:American Presbyterians Category:Female diplomats Category:George W. Bush Administration personnel Category:Southern Methodist University alumni Category:United States Department of State officials Category:United States presidential advisors Category:White House Communications Directors Category:Zonians