Samantha Power

thumb|Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued. Samantha Jane Power (born 21 September 1970) is an Irish-American journalist, diplomat, and government official. She was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development from 2021 to 2025. Power is a member of the Democratic Party. 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. Quotes Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. This resentment may be incurable. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic, and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others. U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. [..] A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto [in 1970], his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States? Article in The New Republic (2003), as quoted in the Wall Street Journal. It’s hard to know how to deal with liberalization in cultures that have been repressed for a long time, that don’t have strong civil societies. But for the United States, of all countries, to be talking about human rights just rings very, very hollow in light of all the objections to our policy in Israel — the perception that we’re hard on one side and not on the other, and that we don’t contest the settlements or human-rights abuses committed by Israeli soldiers, and so on. Plus the fact that we have turned our back on international treaties and not been a global citizen, I think, makes people, even democrats, the leading lights in these repressed societies, very squeamish about being associated with the United States. Samantha Power: How to lose friends and make enemies, Boston Phoenix, 2003. Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued.... America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive. "Samantha Power on U.S. Foreign Policy", an interview with in Molly Lanzarotta, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government (14 March 2007). External links Samantha Power Personal Homepage Profile at Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University Recent Articles by Samantha Power Faculty profile at Harvard Samantha Power: Biography at PBS "A League Of Her Own" in Men's Vogue (June 2007) "Fun Couple of the 21st Century" on Power and Cass Sunstein in Esquire (10 October 2008) Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:Immigrants to the United States Category:People from Dublin Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Diplomats of the United States Category:Human rights activists Category:Women journalists from Ireland Category:United States Permanent Representatives to the United Nations Category:Women born in the 1970s Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Women activists from the United States Category:Yale University alumni Category:Ambassadors of the United States