Former AG Gonzales discusses national security issues
While many Rice alumni have long and distinguished careers after graduation, few are better known outside of the hedges than Alberto Gonzales. Born the son of a migrant worker in a family of six, Gonzales (Lovett '79) rose to become the first Hispanic attorney general, named to the position in Feb. 2005 by then-President George W. Bush. Gonzales was also one of the shortest tenured attorney generals, resigning his post in Sept. 2007 following questions concerning the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys.Gonzales has since returned to his Texas roots. This semester, he is teaching a course at Texas Tech University. On Monday, Gonzales, who earned his law degree from Harvard University, visited Rice to speak about his experiences with the War on Terror in the Bush Administration and his personal views of how the Obama administration is faring. The Thresher sat down with Gonzales in an exclusive interview approximately 30 minutes before he gave a speech at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.
RT: What is your first memory of stepping on the Rice campus?
AG: I had a job selling soft drinks at Rice football games when I was 12 and 13, and you could look from Rice Stadium and the first thing you saw was the [Rice Memorial Center]. There was nothing between the Rice Stadium and the RMC. ... I guess change is positive, but obviously the appearance of the campus is very different now.
RT: What did you find surprising about being attorney general?
AG: The Department of Justice would operate just fine without an attorney general. If you think about it, there's about 130,000 people who work in the Department of Justice. They go to work day in and day out, and they don't care who the attorney general is. ... Now, of course I say this tongue-in-cheek. The attorney general position is very important in terms of setting policies and priorities and vision for the department.
RT: Do you have any regrets in your political career? If so, what is your biggest regret?
AG: I did the very best I could, and at the end of the day I gave it my all. I'm proud of my service in keeping the country safe.
RT: What are your thoughts on your replacement, current Attorney General Eric Holder?
AG: I have a great deal of respect for Attorney General Eric Holder. The attorney general is by nature going to be in the middle of most of the controversies. . I wish Eric Holder well and want him to succeed.
RT: What class do you teach at Texas Tech?
AG: I teach one course. It's a very small course, a sort of seminar course, with 15 students. It's called Contemporary Issues of the Executive Branch, and in that course we talk about all the controversial stuff. We talk about Guantanamo, we're going to talk about collection of intelligence, we're going to talk about torture, we're going to talk about the Geneva Conventions. It's all going to be on the table.
RT: Given the controversial nature of the course, how do you teach your students to approach the material?
AG: I want them to understand that there are both sides to an issue. My job is not to defend the Bush policy - it's to explain the policies that we made. I just want them to understand what really happened in some of these controversial decisions. ... Just because there was controversy doesn't mean that the decisions made by the president were wrong. It just means they were hard.
RT: You've come from humble origins and you rose to become the attorney general of the United States. What's next? Are your best days behind you, or should we expect something more in the future?
AG: Well, I still consider myself a young man, though I'm sure to all of you I'm like an old relic. I feel like I still have things to contribute to Texas and our nation. I've learned a lot. I've experienced a lot. I travel around the country and give speeches and I recruit on behalf of Texas Tech. ... There's nothing as rewarding as public office. It will always make you a better person. If the right opportunity came along, I can't say that I would say no. I think it's so important that when you're called to duty, you step up, and I think that's part of what makes our country so great.
RT: You say there's nothing as rewarding as public service. What about being a public figure?
AG: It's the hardest thing I've ever done. When everything in your background is investigated because people want to find skeletons in your closet, when everywhere you go, anything you say, anything you do, even today, it gets reported somewhere. You know, you get used to it. You always try to remember it's not about you but about your position. But it can be tough. ... It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but I would do it again in a second.
RT: Was there a particular reason why you wanted to go into public service?
AG: When I graduated from law school ... I thought it was important especially in the Hispanic community for somebody like me who had been raised poor and went to Harvard. ... I felt like I had an obligation to try to help out in the community. So I got involved in Hispanic groups around Houston, and the more that I got involved, the more I realized how important that was, and how much I liked it. It set the stage for me to meet the right people, so when Bush got elected governor in 1994 he asked me to come on his general council.
RT: How do you feel Rice prepared you to go out and do the things you did?
AG: Well, you get a first-class education here, of course, and that obviously is the foundation to which everything else follows. ... When I was a boy working those football games, I used to dream about going to school at Rice and how wonderful that would be. For me to do that and then come back and give the commencement [in 2004], boy, that was special.
RT: What's your fondest memory here at Rice?
AG: My classes with Doc C [political science professor Gilbert Cuthbertson]. I played on at least one intramural football championship team, one intramural baseball team and one intramural softball championship team. [The] football teams were never that good. ... It was that way when I sold soft drinks, but boy, did I enjoy going to Rice Stadium. It was something special.
RT: If you could give one piece of advice to Rice students, what would that be?
AG: Dream big and take risks. They say that when you take a risk and you win, you're happy, and when you take a risk and you lose, you're wise.
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