Page "Madeleine Albright" Paragraph 13

Albright returned to Washington in 1968, and commuted to Columbia for her PhD, which she received in 1975.

She began fund-raising for her daughters ' school, involvement which led to several positions on education boards.

She was eventually invited to organize a fund-raising dinner for the 1972 presidential campaign of U. S. Senator Ed Muskie of Maine.

This association with Muskie led to a position as his chief legislative assistant in 1976.

However, after the 1976 U. S. presidential election of Jimmy Carter, Albright's former professor Brzezinski was named National Security Advisor, and recruited Albright from Muskie in 1978 to work in the West Wing as the National Security Council ’ s congressional liaison.

Following Carter's loss in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, Albright moved on to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., where she was given a grant for a research project.

She chose to write on the dissident journalists involved in Poland's Solidarity movement, then in its infancy but gaining international attention.

She traveled to Poland for her research, interviewing dissidents in Gdansk, Warsaw and Krakow.

Upon her return to Washington, her husband announced his intention to divorce her for another woman.