Samantha Power, the youngest person to ever serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, will present "The State of the World: Challenges and Opportunities," on March 22 at 4 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons as part of the Clough Colloquium.
Power, named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People," served from 2013 to 2017 as the 28th U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, where she negotiated sanctions against North Korea, lobbied to secure the release of political prisoners, voiced US opposition to Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and helped mobilize global action against ISIL.
Prior to her role with the United Nations, she served on the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, focusing on issues such as human trafficking, religious freedom, and LGBT and women's rights.
"Samantha Power was a long-term, highly valued foreign policy adviser to Senator and President Obama, culminating in her appointment as US ambassador to the UN," said Professor of Political Science David Deese. "Like earlier UN ambassadors—such as Andrew Young and Donald McHenry under President Carter, and Madeleine Albright for President Clinton—she brought to US foreign policy and this high-profile UN position a deep sense of moral and ethical values."
An Irish immigrant who came to the U.S. at age nine, Power earned a BA from Yale University and a JD from Harvard Law School. Her early work as a journalist covering the Bosnian conflict inspired her Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She is also the author of the New York Times best-seller Sergio: One Man's Fight to Save the World.
Power is now the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a professor of the practice at Harvard Law. She is also a fellow for Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advancing Study and is writing a book, The Education of an Idealist, which will chronicle her years in public service and reflect on the role of human rights and humanitarian ideals in contemporary geopolitics.
This event is sponsored by The Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics and presented with The Women's Collaborative and The Women's Center in celebration of Women's History Month. For more information, email winston.center@bc.edu.
—Christine Balquist | University Communications
