Samantha Power
Author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
About the Author
Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government
Works by Samantha Power
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008) 429 copies, 8 reviews
Associated Works
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2003) — Foreword — 1,867 copies, 30 reviews
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives and Broken Hearts (2004) — Narrator, some editions — 796 copies, 31 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Power, Samantha
- Legal name
- Power, Samantha Jane
- Other names
- POWER, Samantha
- Birthdate
- 1970-09-21
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Yale University (BA|1992)
Harvard Law School (JD|1999) - Occupations
- journalist
diplomat
government official - Organizations
- Harvard University
U.S. State Department - Awards and honors
- Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (2003)
J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize (2003)
Barnard Medal of Distinction (2015)
Ulysses Medal (2017)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize (2019)
Henry Kissinger Prize (2016) - Relationships
- Sunstein, Cass R. (spouse)
- Short biography
- Samantha Power was born in London and raised in Ireland, and came to the U.S. at age nine. She received her B.A degree from Yale College in 1992 and her J.D. Degree from Harvard Law School. She is a well-known diplomat, author, and journalist, and is currently on the faculty at Harvard University.
Power's career spans many roles including a war correspondent in former Yugoslavia, a faculty member at Harvard, and a senior adviser to then-Senator Barack Obama. She became a special assistant to President Obama and served as a Director of Human Rights in the National Security Council.
Appointed as a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 2013, Power worked on U.N. reforms, women's/LGBT/human rights and on refugees. Listed as one of the powerful/influential woman by Forbes/Time magazine, and a winner of the 2016 Henry Kissinger Prize amongst other prestigious prizes, she was also featured in the documentary Watchers of the Sky, for her contribution to preventing genocide. She has authored many books and won a Pulitzer prize for her first book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. - Nationality
- Ireland (birth)
USA (naturalized) - Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- London, England, UK
Members
Reviews
Fascinating, passionate, and damning in equal measure, A Problem from Hell is an indictment against the prevailing attitudes in the USA (and much of the west) towards genocide throughout the twentieth century. From the Turkish massacres of the Armenians, through to the Serbian butchery in Kosovo, Power examines the ways in which American politicians have paid lip-service to opposing genocide, while failing to act for reasons of political expediency. As Power writes: "No US President has ever show more made genocide prevention a priority, and no US President has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." She makes a very compelling moral argument as to why military intervention is sometimes necessary to ensure that lives are saved, and why the US should use its pre-eminent global position to bring about that intervention. I did, however, wonder why Power chose to focus on examples of genocide which placed Washington as a rather remote outsider, a quasi-isolationist, removed from complicity in the causes of genocide—East Timor and Guatemala are two sad examples—why not also look at the suffering American militarism and complicity have caused? show less
During her tenure in the U.S. National Security Council, Samantha Power was involved in the efforts to bring Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić to justice. In her memoir, The Education of an Idealist, recounts an event in that process:
It’s representative of the worldview that Power expresses throughout the book that she would fail to see the irony in trying to advocate for human rights in a room built in the 1870s with the proceeds of U.S. colonial expansion and named for treaties that her country has broken time and time again (and continues to break!) while committing genocide against Native American peoples.
I use the phrase “her country” advisedly because for all the repeated reference to her “Irish roots” and her story as an immigrant from Ireland to the United States, Power set aside her Irishness as determinedly as she worked to erase any trace of Dublin from her accent. I don’t say that lightly, or because I think it’s impossible to be both Irish and American. I say that because Power has whole-heartedly embraced the concept of American exceptionalism, with its equation of military power and economic hegemony with “greatness”; the idea of the U.S. as a country uniquely composed of immigrants (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, indeed, Ireland, all have a greater percentage of foreign-born residents as of 2019 than does the U.S.) which allows those immigrants and their children opportunities that they’d never have in any other country (my politics don’t intersect much with those of Leo Varadkar, but I can’t deny that he was Taoiseach: with a dad from India, openly gay, and agnostic. Try having someone like that elected as head of government in the Greatest Country in the WorldTM).
(It’s also clear that Power comes from a far more privileged background than she’s ever quite willing to explicitly admit to the reader. For someone from Ireland, however, it’s obvious that anyone who was born to squash-playing, “Mum”-saying, university graduate surgeon parents in 1970s Ireland and whose first school was bloody Mount Anville (fee-paying suburban Dublin school) didn’t exactly come from the wrong side of the tracks (she was raised in Ballsbridge for feck’s sake). No matter how much she talks about how moving to the U.S. gave her opportunities she wouldn’t have had if she’d stayed in Ireland, it’s clear that these were differences of type rather than kind.)
I’m not saying that The Education of an Idealist isn’t often an interesting and informative read, one which shows how an administration works and how practical considerations, bad luck, or other circumstances can force unsatisfying compromises. I also don’t think that Power is a moustache-twirling villain who feigns an interest in human rights and the prevention of war crimes in order to get ahead in politics—after all, as the current U.S. administration is proving to the world daily, it’s possible to get ahead with absolutely no ethics at all! Plus her work as U.N. Ambassador did show a commitment to LGBT rights, combatting the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and dealing with the shamefully persistent phenomenon of U.N. peacekeepers committing sexual assaults of the populations whom they are tasked with protecting.
But ultimately this is a book which provides a case study of how, with the best will in the world, good intentions can keep on paving that road to hell. show less
”…we invited the Serbian president’s chief of staff, Miki Rakić, to the White House. David, who had been a theater director in college and always had an eye for the mise-en-scène, reserved the ornate Indian Treaty Room in the EEOB for our meeting.show more
He thought the intricate gold and marble detailing and the kaleidoscopically tiled floor would serve as a fitting backdrop to my reciting the benefits that would accrue to Serbia if Mladić were rounded up.”
It’s representative of the worldview that Power expresses throughout the book that she would fail to see the irony in trying to advocate for human rights in a room built in the 1870s with the proceeds of U.S. colonial expansion and named for treaties that her country has broken time and time again (and continues to break!) while committing genocide against Native American peoples.
I use the phrase “her country” advisedly because for all the repeated reference to her “Irish roots” and her story as an immigrant from Ireland to the United States, Power set aside her Irishness as determinedly as she worked to erase any trace of Dublin from her accent. I don’t say that lightly, or because I think it’s impossible to be both Irish and American. I say that because Power has whole-heartedly embraced the concept of American exceptionalism, with its equation of military power and economic hegemony with “greatness”; the idea of the U.S. as a country uniquely composed of immigrants (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, indeed, Ireland, all have a greater percentage of foreign-born residents as of 2019 than does the U.S.) which allows those immigrants and their children opportunities that they’d never have in any other country (my politics don’t intersect much with those of Leo Varadkar, but I can’t deny that he was Taoiseach: with a dad from India, openly gay, and agnostic. Try having someone like that elected as head of government in the Greatest Country in the WorldTM).
(It’s also clear that Power comes from a far more privileged background than she’s ever quite willing to explicitly admit to the reader. For someone from Ireland, however, it’s obvious that anyone who was born to squash-playing, “Mum”-saying, university graduate surgeon parents in 1970s Ireland and whose first school was bloody Mount Anville (fee-paying suburban Dublin school) didn’t exactly come from the wrong side of the tracks (she was raised in Ballsbridge for feck’s sake). No matter how much she talks about how moving to the U.S. gave her opportunities she wouldn’t have had if she’d stayed in Ireland, it’s clear that these were differences of type rather than kind.)
I’m not saying that The Education of an Idealist isn’t often an interesting and informative read, one which shows how an administration works and how practical considerations, bad luck, or other circumstances can force unsatisfying compromises. I also don’t think that Power is a moustache-twirling villain who feigns an interest in human rights and the prevention of war crimes in order to get ahead in politics—after all, as the current U.S. administration is proving to the world daily, it’s possible to get ahead with absolutely no ethics at all! Plus her work as U.N. Ambassador did show a commitment to LGBT rights, combatting the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and dealing with the shamefully persistent phenomenon of U.N. peacekeepers committing sexual assaults of the populations whom they are tasked with protecting.
But ultimately this is a book which provides a case study of how, with the best will in the world, good intentions can keep on paving that road to hell. show less
This book is not for the faint-at-heart. And it's best read when one has the stomach for human tragedy. That said, this is one of the most important books I've read in a very long time. The author, Samantha Power, is the current US Ambassador to the United Nations.
This is a clear-eyed and impassioned view of some of the 20th Century's most horrific events - those that have cleared the definition of genocide in international law. That story is in itself a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. show more
The book is doubly tragic by framing its narrative around the quixotic figures who did what they could against evil - Raphael Lemkin, who fought tirelessly to get the UN Genocide Convention adopted, and died penniless and broken. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who stood on the floor of the US Senate every day that it was in session and spoke out to get the US to ratify the Convention (over 3,000 speeches). State Department field officers who put their careers on the line - sometimes destroying those careers entirely - by speaking out about the killings in Cambodia or the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s. The generals who led UN peacekeeping missions and who were marginalized for demanding the troops and the rules of engagement that would allow them to stop the killing.
Thank you, Raphael Lemkin. Thank you Peter Galbraith. Thank you Romeo Dallaire. Thank you General Wesley Clark. Thank you Richard Holbrooke. I'll end with a quote from Holbrooke: "If we had bombed those f**kers, as I recommended, Srebrenica would not have happened." show less
This is a clear-eyed and impassioned view of some of the 20th Century's most horrific events - those that have cleared the definition of genocide in international law. That story is in itself a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. show more
The book is doubly tragic by framing its narrative around the quixotic figures who did what they could against evil - Raphael Lemkin, who fought tirelessly to get the UN Genocide Convention adopted, and died penniless and broken. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who stood on the floor of the US Senate every day that it was in session and spoke out to get the US to ratify the Convention (over 3,000 speeches). State Department field officers who put their careers on the line - sometimes destroying those careers entirely - by speaking out about the killings in Cambodia or the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s. The generals who led UN peacekeeping missions and who were marginalized for demanding the troops and the rules of engagement that would allow them to stop the killing.
Thank you, Raphael Lemkin. Thank you Peter Galbraith. Thank you Romeo Dallaire. Thank you General Wesley Clark. Thank you Richard Holbrooke. I'll end with a quote from Holbrooke: "If we had bombed those f**kers, as I recommended, Srebrenica would not have happened." show less
Summary: A memoir on immigrant-American, war correspondent, human rights activist, and diplomat Samantha Power.
Samantha Power has led an interesting life, by any measure. Born in Ireland, she emigrated with her mother Vera to the United States as a young girl, leaving an alcoholic father who eventually drank himself to death at a young age. She and her mother became naturalized citizens and Vera married Eddie, who provided not only the love but the stability she needed. She played basketball show more and ran cross country in high school and is an avid baseball fan. After graduating from Yale, she ended up as a freelance war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia, where she encountered the genocidal efforts against Bosnian Muslims, culminating in Srebenica. Returning to the U.S. she plunged into law school while doing the research on her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem From Hell, a history of genocide in the 20th century.
She returned to Harvard, teaching at the Kennedy School for Government and serving as Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She left Harvard in 2005 for a one-year fellowship with then-Senator Barack Obama, helping shape his efforts to press for American intervention in Darfur. She campaigned for Obama, resigning at one point, when what she thought was an off-the-record conversation about Senator Clinton was published. She later joined his administrator on the National Security Council, where she served as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. In 2013, she was appointed the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where she served until January 2017.
Leaving public office in 2017 afforded more time with her husband, legal scholar at Harvard, Cass Sunstein, and their two children, Declan and Rian as well as resuming teaching duties at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy. She returned to government in 2021 as the Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development.
The Education of an Idealist covers everything except for that last sentence. Fitting for an interesting life, Power tells an interesting story, an un-put-downable story at least for me. Beyond the curriculum vitae outlined above, we come to understand the shaping of a woman passionate in the pursuit of human rights and how she persisted when her passion ran up against political realities and limits. This is a woman who first of all knew both love and loss, and understood both the pain of feeling she’d abandoned a father, and the flourishing she experienced with her mother and step-father who were for her every step of the way. I was fascinated to learn that until about mid-way through her time at Yale, she was more interested in sports than international affairs. A European trip awakened her to genocide, oppression, and the fissures that would eventually erupt in Yugoslavia. An internship with Mort Abramowitz where she researched the Bosnian conflict led her to the adventure of trying to see that war up close as a war correspondent–setting the precedent for her commitment to get “on the ground” whenever she could to understand a crisis–whether the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the Ebola crisis, or even the missions of other U.N. ambassadors, who she visited rather than making them call on her.
The narrative is a story of a passion to save human lives, and to stand up for human flourishing, where ideals often ran up against reality. She learned how hard it is to do better. One senses her frustration when she thought she had a commitment from the President for U.S. intervention in Syria after Assad’s nerve gas attacks, only for him to backpedal and fail to secure Senate support. She learned to do what could be done, negotiating protocols with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical weapons. We see her frustration when political realities with Turkey prevent Obama from naming atrocities against the Armenians a century ago genocide. And we see how hurtful accusations against her could be when she had fought for the very things she was accused of not doing.
Part of the narrative is how she found strength in fostering community with other women both in her own government, and with women ambassadors at the UN. One of her last acts was to call attention to twenty women being held as political prisoners. Her efforts, and the political pressure applied, resulted in the release of 14 before she left office. They also, along with her live-in nanny, Maria, help her wrestle with the tension of high-level government service and parenting, and the unavoidable tradeoffs this involves.
Perhaps in light of the present situation with Russia and Ukraine, Power devoted her last speech at the UN to warning the world of the efforts of Russia to sow havoc, whether supporting Assad’s genocidal efforts to eliminate his opposition, the ruthless annexation of Crimea from Ukraine (bite by bite?), and the interference in American elections. I admire the fire with which she spoke:
“Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you will not lie about or justify?"
Power also reminds us of the difference immigrants make in our country, whether herself as an Irish naturalized US citizen, or the Turkish immigrant who founded Chobani Yogurt or her nanny Maria, to whom she administered the oath of citizenship. Her passion for refugees energized her efforts to get those “in the pipeline” settled as the doors were closing.
The one question that Power fails to wrestle with is the tension between human rights advocacy and the question of whether there are limits to what any given government can or should do. These are the realities her idealism bumps up against. Given the unique place of America in the world, should vigorous international human rights advocacy be a cardinal doctrine of our foreign policy, and should this be backed with American military force if necessary? This seems implicit in Power’s advocacy, but this is not defended, and so foreign policy seems to end up a patchwork of idealism and realpolitik. Power’s resort at the end is that if we cannot change the world, then we change the smaller and individual worlds we can. That may be a good personal response, but is it sufficient for governments?
That said, this is a memoir and not a foreign policy treatise. In addition to a riveting read, I am grateful for the example of someone who does not give way to cynicism or despair, who works for the possible when the ideal eludes one. The importance of bedrock convictions, the support of a strong, loving family, and finding community are lessons from Power’s life in how to sustain one’s ideals, even as one is “educated” to the realities that bump up against the ideal. Hopefully it will help inspire a new generation, including many women, to the public service for the common good which has always been vital to the health of our country and our world. show less
Samantha Power has led an interesting life, by any measure. Born in Ireland, she emigrated with her mother Vera to the United States as a young girl, leaving an alcoholic father who eventually drank himself to death at a young age. She and her mother became naturalized citizens and Vera married Eddie, who provided not only the love but the stability she needed. She played basketball show more and ran cross country in high school and is an avid baseball fan. After graduating from Yale, she ended up as a freelance war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia, where she encountered the genocidal efforts against Bosnian Muslims, culminating in Srebenica. Returning to the U.S. she plunged into law school while doing the research on her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem From Hell, a history of genocide in the 20th century.
She returned to Harvard, teaching at the Kennedy School for Government and serving as Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She left Harvard in 2005 for a one-year fellowship with then-Senator Barack Obama, helping shape his efforts to press for American intervention in Darfur. She campaigned for Obama, resigning at one point, when what she thought was an off-the-record conversation about Senator Clinton was published. She later joined his administrator on the National Security Council, where she served as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. In 2013, she was appointed the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where she served until January 2017.
Leaving public office in 2017 afforded more time with her husband, legal scholar at Harvard, Cass Sunstein, and their two children, Declan and Rian as well as resuming teaching duties at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy. She returned to government in 2021 as the Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development.
The Education of an Idealist covers everything except for that last sentence. Fitting for an interesting life, Power tells an interesting story, an un-put-downable story at least for me. Beyond the curriculum vitae outlined above, we come to understand the shaping of a woman passionate in the pursuit of human rights and how she persisted when her passion ran up against political realities and limits. This is a woman who first of all knew both love and loss, and understood both the pain of feeling she’d abandoned a father, and the flourishing she experienced with her mother and step-father who were for her every step of the way. I was fascinated to learn that until about mid-way through her time at Yale, she was more interested in sports than international affairs. A European trip awakened her to genocide, oppression, and the fissures that would eventually erupt in Yugoslavia. An internship with Mort Abramowitz where she researched the Bosnian conflict led her to the adventure of trying to see that war up close as a war correspondent–setting the precedent for her commitment to get “on the ground” whenever she could to understand a crisis–whether the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the Ebola crisis, or even the missions of other U.N. ambassadors, who she visited rather than making them call on her.
The narrative is a story of a passion to save human lives, and to stand up for human flourishing, where ideals often ran up against reality. She learned how hard it is to do better. One senses her frustration when she thought she had a commitment from the President for U.S. intervention in Syria after Assad’s nerve gas attacks, only for him to backpedal and fail to secure Senate support. She learned to do what could be done, negotiating protocols with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical weapons. We see her frustration when political realities with Turkey prevent Obama from naming atrocities against the Armenians a century ago genocide. And we see how hurtful accusations against her could be when she had fought for the very things she was accused of not doing.
Part of the narrative is how she found strength in fostering community with other women both in her own government, and with women ambassadors at the UN. One of her last acts was to call attention to twenty women being held as political prisoners. Her efforts, and the political pressure applied, resulted in the release of 14 before she left office. They also, along with her live-in nanny, Maria, help her wrestle with the tension of high-level government service and parenting, and the unavoidable tradeoffs this involves.
Perhaps in light of the present situation with Russia and Ukraine, Power devoted her last speech at the UN to warning the world of the efforts of Russia to sow havoc, whether supporting Assad’s genocidal efforts to eliminate his opposition, the ruthless annexation of Crimea from Ukraine (bite by bite?), and the interference in American elections. I admire the fire with which she spoke:
“Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit? Is there nothing you will not lie about or justify?"
Power also reminds us of the difference immigrants make in our country, whether herself as an Irish naturalized US citizen, or the Turkish immigrant who founded Chobani Yogurt or her nanny Maria, to whom she administered the oath of citizenship. Her passion for refugees energized her efforts to get those “in the pipeline” settled as the doors were closing.
The one question that Power fails to wrestle with is the tension between human rights advocacy and the question of whether there are limits to what any given government can or should do. These are the realities her idealism bumps up against. Given the unique place of America in the world, should vigorous international human rights advocacy be a cardinal doctrine of our foreign policy, and should this be backed with American military force if necessary? This seems implicit in Power’s advocacy, but this is not defended, and so foreign policy seems to end up a patchwork of idealism and realpolitik. Power’s resort at the end is that if we cannot change the world, then we change the smaller and individual worlds we can. That may be a good personal response, but is it sufficient for governments?
That said, this is a memoir and not a foreign policy treatise. In addition to a riveting read, I am grateful for the example of someone who does not give way to cynicism or despair, who works for the possible when the ideal eludes one. The importance of bedrock convictions, the support of a strong, loving family, and finding community are lessons from Power’s life in how to sustain one’s ideals, even as one is “educated” to the realities that bump up against the ideal. Hopefully it will help inspire a new generation, including many women, to the public service for the common good which has always been vital to the health of our country and our world. show less
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