The World-Changing Power of Idealism

John Prendergast, Co-Founder of The Sentry and Founding Director of the Enough Project, will moderate a discussion with Samantha Power, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, at an event entitled “The World-Changing Power of Idealism – Ambassador Samantha Power’s Journey from Activist to Insider.”

Samantha Power was a 38-year-old journalist and human rights crusader who’d won a Pulitzer Prize for her blistering criticism of US foreign policy when President Obama plucked her out of activism and put her at the center of high-stakes diplomacy. Suddenly, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, she confronted the challenge of turning her ideals into practice.

Power will trace her journey from war correspondent in Bosnia to the very centers of power and take us behind the scenes into her advocacy for intervention in Libya, wrenching decisions over Syria, navigation of issues concerning Israel at the United Nations and her belief that America can lead the world to advance human dignity.

Power teaches at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide and the NYT bestseller Chasing the Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World.