It’s rare that professors find themselves at the center of a political firestorm. But that’s where Samantha Power, Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard, found herself last week when, during an off-the-record conversation with a reporter, she referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster” and then had to resign as senior foreign policy to adviser to Barack Obama.
Until then, Power had been riding a big wave of success. Only 37 years old, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She’s also now promoting her second book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. (Watch a clip from the book tour here). And until this high profile slip-up, she was clearly helping shape Obama’s foreign policy. You can hear Power’s influence in how Obama answered the highly publicized question last summer — would you, as president, negotiate directly with Iran’s Ahmadinejad? (He said yes.) Power’s thinking on international diplomacy gets articulated fairly well in this lengthy interview. Below, we’ve also posted a clip (from FORA.tv) of Power speaking about Obama and the question of negotiating with enemies. (Get the full talk here.)
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Looks like she will have to learn to negotiate with political enemies closer to home if she is going to make the jump from academia to the world or real politics…