Quite the Power

In this week's class, Dr. Voth spoke a bit about a woman named Samantha Power. I didn't recognize her name from any other context or area of study, but when he listed some of her work in the world of human rights academia, I was hooked.

Since we didn't have time to delve into her background, I thought I'd do a bit of research myself.

Samantha Power is an Irish-American. She is an academic, government official, and writer. She serves on the National Security Council staff, was a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and is a special assistant to President Barack Obama.

Needless to say- she has quite the impressive resume.

But, perhaps what is more impressive is her work to make the world aware of the atrocities of genocide, ethnoviolence, and violations of human rights. In her 2003 book "A Problem From Hell: America & the Age of Genocide," Powers examines the origins of genocide and analyzes government's consistent failure to identify and act upon genocide around the world. This award winning book is said to challenge American government in it's international affairs, and to point out that the powerful and influential countries of the world has quite a ways to go before resting with a clean conscious.

Power's work centralizes on public awareness of all genocides (especially in Darfur and Armenia) and she ceaselessly calls for armed intervention into humanitarian crisis situations.

That being said, it is not surprising that Power advocates U.S. military involvement in the tumultuous country of Libya.

To Power, America has a "moral obligation to intervene" in preventing genocides.

The amazing part? When she is praised for her work and passionate efforts, she notoriously states that "you don't get extra credit for doing the right thing."

To read more on Samantha Power, click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/samantha-power/gIQATW3s6O_topic.html#path-to-power