The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

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:

”…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. 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 show more 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

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 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 show more 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

Having read Power's book on genocide years ago, I wanted this memoir as soon as I read about it.

At the start, Power says "Some may interpret this book's title as suggesting that I began with lofty dreams about how one person could make a difference, only to be 'educated' by the brutish forces that I encountered. That's not the story that follows." She's right.

In this personal memoir, Power doesn't make excuses. She tracks her rise from child in Ireland to doctoral candidate to writer of A Problem from Hell to her position as ambassador to the UN under Barack Obama. In this trip she went from outside observer of human rights violations to a position where she could influence the actions of the US. Challenged to put her money where her show more mouth was, Power stood up.

In case after case, Power's voice did not diminish. She was not always successful in bringing about the larger changes or actions but she did not lose her focus. For me, reading about Power's commitment to what is often considered "weakness" is inspiring. Further, the glimpse into the presidency of Barack Obama is equally meaningful. I take away his advice: "don't admire the problem". He wanted solutions, not hand-wringing. He was willing to hear points of view at odds with his own, and at the same time did not back down when he believed he made the right choice.

I came away refreshed and willing to believe once again that for some politicians integrity means something. show less

I was slightly overwhelmed when I picked up Samantha's memoir---heavy, and LONG---but I was immediately absorbed and finally decided that this has to be one of my very most favorite books of the year---and I am SO impressed with Samantha. She filled in a lot of history for me personally that I had skipped over with her closeup and very personal view of what was happening in her own life in relation to her function as a government employee, and then, our country's UN representative. It's easy to not pay enough attention to what is happening in the world when one's own life take most of the attention. I am amazed with what Samantha Power was able to accomplish. Keeping such close track of what was happening was definitely aided by her show more experiences as a journalist but how fortunate the reader is to have the results of all of that work in this book. What will her next memoir include years from now? show less

Beautifully read by the author, the memoir suffers from the same tendency to document every single thing that happened that one sees in both Obama's and Bolton's recent books. Even for those of us who lived through the period in question, it's a fascinating reminder of everything that has happened globally and domestically in the last 40 years

Like many people who are able to drive real change, Powers is an idealist who can't let go of a passionately held value, no matter how much trouble sticking to it might get her into. It's an admirable quality, and I'm not sure I would want to know her well.

I didn't expect to enjoy this book but Ambassador Power surprised me: this is a much more personal book than "A Problem from Hell" which I liked very much. She reveals quite a bit of herself while also portraying the life of a working diplomat with grace.

A wonderful autobiography from the woman who became the US Ambassador to the UN during Obama's tenancy of the White House.

An Irish-American, migrant, whose family moved to the US when she was 9 years old. Initially a journalist and writer. A deep human rights activist, whose most important book about genocide brought her to Obama's attention.

Her autobiography takes you on many journeys into dark as well as light places. Bosnia and Darfur, to name but two of the darkest, meeting the people she helped and was helped by.

Honest about her flaws and mistakes, vivid and detailed in her recounting of her life and those of others around her.

Highly recommended.