Samantha Power
Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an American journalist, diplomat, and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.[1] Power is a member of the Democratic Party.
Samantha Power
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Power began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars before entering academic administration. In 1998, she became the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she later served as the first Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy until 2009. She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008.
Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008. She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from January 2009 to February 2013.[2] In April 2012, Obama chose her to chair a newly formed Atrocities Prevention Board. As U.N. ambassador, Power's office focused on such issues as United Nations reform, women's rights and LGBT rights, religious freedom and religious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, human rights, and democracy, including in the Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar. A longtime advocate of armed intervention by the United States in opposition to atrocities abroad,[3] she is considered to have been a key figure in the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.[4]
Power is a subject of the 2014 documentary Watchers of the Sky, which explains the contribution of several notable people, including Power, to the cause of genocide prevention. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. She has also been awarded the 2015 Barnard Medal of Distinction[5] and the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize.[6] In 2016, she was listed as the 41st-most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.[7]
In January 2021, Joe Biden nominated Power to head the United States Agency for International Development. Her nomination was confirmed by the US Senate on April 28, 2021, by a vote of 68–26.[8]
Early life and education[edit]
Power was born in London,[9][10] the daughter of Irish parents Vera Delaney,[9] a nephrologist and field-hockey international player, and Jim Power, a dentist and piano player.[11][12] Raised in Ireland until she was nine, Power lived in the Dublin district of Castleknock and was schooled in Mount Anville Montessori Junior School, Goatstown, Dublin,[13] until her mother emigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1979.[14]
She attended Lakeside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was a member of the cross country team and the basketball team. She subsequently received her B.A. degree in History[15] from Yale University, where she was a member of Aurelian Honor Society, and her J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.[16] In 1993, at the age of 23, she became a U.S. citizen.
Career[edit]
After graduating from Yale, Power worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a researcher for Carnegie's then-President Morton Abramowitz. From 1993 to 1996, she worked as a war correspondent, covering the Yugoslav Wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic. When she returned to the United States, she attended Harvard Law School, receiving her J.D. in 1999. The following year, her first edited work, Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact (edited with Graham Allison) was published. Her first book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she wrote while attending law school; it helped create the doctrine of "responsibility to protect."[17] The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize[18] in 2003. Power's book framed genocide as a problem that the United States was involved in as an onlooker rather than a perpetrator or enabler. She has been a longtime advocate of the use of armed force by the United States in response to genocide abroad.[3]
Her other books include Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008), The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrook in the World (co-edited with Derek Chollet, 2011), and The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (2019).
From 1998 to 2002, Power served as the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she later served as the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy.
In 2004, Power was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world that year.[19] In fall 2007, she began writing a regular column for Time.[20]
Power spent 2005–06 working in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking and directing Obama's interest in the Darfur conflict.[21] She served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, but resigned during the primaries. In 2009 President Obama appointed her to a position on the National Security Council and in 2013 he appointed her as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-rank position.[22]
Honors[edit]
Barnard College awarded Power its highest award,[85] the 2015 Barnard Medal of Distinction, among other things her book A Problem from Hell, along with her denunciation of genocide and "hope that vows of 'never again' would truly mean 'never again'".[5] The 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize was awarded on June 8, 2016, to Ambassador Samantha Power serving as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations at the American Academy in Berlin.[86] She was awarded the Ulysses Medal by University College Dublin in November 2017. In 2019, she was selected as the recipient of the 2019 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science.[87] In 2019, she presented the commencement address at Indiana University, where she received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (D.H.L.).[88]
In April 2017, Power was named to a joint faculty appointment at Harvard Law School (HLS) and Harvard Kennedy School. At the Kennedy School, she is affiliated with both the Carr Center and the Belfer Center, where she serves as senior member, board member, and director of the new International Peace and Security Project.[89] She is currently co-teaching a Harvard class with her husband, Cass Sunstein, called "Making Change When Change is Hard."[90]
In addition, Power holds the following positions:
In October 2018, in response to the Saudi Arabia's explanation about the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Power tweeted that "Shifting from bald-face lies ("#Khashoggi left consulate") to faux condemnation (of a "rogue operation") to claiming the fox will credibly investigate what he did to the hen ... will convince nobody."[94]