Rice was a Democrat until 1982 , when she changed her political affiliation to Republican , in part because she disagreed with the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter , and because of the influence of her father , who was Republican . As she told the 2000 Republican National Convention , " My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote . The Republicans did . " Rice was hired by Stanford University as an assistant professor of political science ( 1981 – 1987 ) . She was promoted to associate professor in 1987 , a post she held until 1993 . She was a specialist on the Soviet Union and gave lectures on the subject for the Berkeley-Stanford joint program led by UC Berkeley Professor George W. Breslauer in the mid-1980s
2000 Republican National Convention
2000 Republican National Convention
Condoleezza Rice