January 30, 2009
Harvard Kennedy School Professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power ’99 will take a top foreign policy position in the Obama administration, serving as senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council,
The Associated Press reported today.
An expert on human rights and foreign policy, her writings include the 2008 book “Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World,” about the slain U.N. diplomat; and “’A Problem from Hell’”: America and the Age of Genocide, which received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a Council on Foreign Relations prize. A journalist before law school, Power covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia. After becoming a professor at the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Power continued to report from such places as Burundi, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.
Power was a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, and after the election she was a member of the team looking at how the new administration should approach national security, defense and state department issues.