Samantha Power

White House Profile

Samantha Power

Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights

Samantha Power is Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council. Power most recently served as the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she taught courses on U.S. foreign policy, human rights, and extremism and where she was the founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

She is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (2002) and Chasing the Flame: Sergio Viera de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008), the basis for the award-winning HBO documentary, "Sergio." She is also the recent editor, with Derek Chollet, of The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World (2011). Power has served as a columnist at Time Magazine and, in her journalism, has reported from such places as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and contributed regularly to the New Yorker Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and the New Republic.

Power is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She lives with her husband, Cass Sunstein, and their son Declan in Washington, DC.

Samantha Power's Posts

Civil Rights

US Leadership to Advance Equality for LGBT People Abroad

December 13, 2012 at 5:00 PM EDT

In honor of Human Rights Week, Samantha Power explains how advancing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people around the world is central to, not separate from, our comprehensive human rights agenda.

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Foreign Policy

Supporting Human Rights in Burma

November 9, 2012 at 11:01 AM EDT

President Obama's policy approach to Burma has been to support reform and those championing it – an investment in Burma’s future that the President will personally reinforce later this month during his historic visit to Rangoon.

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Foreign Policy

President Obama Directs New Atrocity Prevention Measures

August 6, 2011 at 7:04 PM EDT

A new tool to strengthen our ability to prevent genocide and other crimes against humanity

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Foreign Policy

Announcing HumanRights.gov

April 11, 2011 at 2:44 PM EDT

In conjunction with the release of its annual Human Rights Report, the State Department officially launches HumanRights.gov.

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Ethics

Transparency Gone Global

March 22, 2011 at 4:09 PM EDT

Good government isn't just a priority for President Obama. In countries around the world, governments and civil society groups are taking new and creative steps to ensure that government delivers for citizens and to strengthen democratic accountability.

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2010 Asia Trip

A US-India Partnership on Open Government

November 7, 2010 at 3:56 PM EDT

Samantha Power, Senior Director and Special Assistant for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, describes President Obama's visit to the Expo on Democracy and Open Government in Mumbai.

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Foreign Policy

A Landmark Achievement for Human Rights: The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association

September 30, 2010 at 7:05 PM EDT

Samantha Power, Senior Director and Special Assistant for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, explains how a diverse group of countries has come together to create the first-ever Special Rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly.

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Foreign Policy

President Obama Meets the Peacekeepers

September 24, 2009 at 10:43 AM EDT

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