Samantha Power Research Paper

I. Attention Getter: What comes to mind when you think of the word power? For some its characters with incredible strength and abilities, like superheroes. Some also think of world leaders, like presidents, and prime ministers. When I hear the word power I think of a woman who demonstrates true superhuman abilities and uses her position in the government to advocate for change. This woman is Samantha Power.

II. Motivation for Listening: Ambassador Samantha Power is known in the world of politics for using her platform to advocate for human rights. Her career started as a freelance reporter in several countries. She then became a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy school of Government. Power is also a Pulitzer Prize winner, member of President

Body

I. First Main Point: Early on in her career Samantha Power traveled internationally for her journalism work, and her first book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

a. She spent the early years of her career as a war correspondent during the Yugoslav Wars. Her freelance journalism led to her reporting on war and genocide in several different countries including Bosnia, Rwanda, and other countries throughout Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. She reported for a number of honorable magazines and news journals including The New Yorker, The Economist and The Boston Globe.

b. In 2003, her first book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide won a Pulitzer Prize. The book analyzes foreign policy and America’s silence in the face of genocide. Specifically, the lack of humanitarian intervention during the genocide of the Kurdish people of Iraq, the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge regime, the Bosnian people by Bosnian Serb militaries, and the Tutsi people of Rwanda by Hutu militias.(her book)

Transition: Now I’m going to talk about her work as a professor.

II. Second Main Point: Samantha Power taught at Harvard’s JFK School of Government and founded an initiative on human rights during her time

Power taught classes on U.S. foreign policy, extremism, and human rights during her time at Harvard’s school of government. She was also the first person awarded the title of the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy. (whitehouse.gov)

b. Samantha Power was the founding director of a human rights initiative at Harvard called the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The purpose of the center is to prepare up and coming leaders for their careers in public service, as well as, provide substantial research to the resolution of public policy issues (carrcenter).

Transition: Now I’m going to add some information about what she’s done during her time as the youngest U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

III. Third Main Point: Samantha Power makes the lives of women, refugees and members of the LGBT community a priority in her daily work.

a. After the devastating abduction of over 200 Chibok school girls by terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, Ambassador Power traveled there in an effort to refocus the world’s attention on the missing people and the campaign to defeat their kidnappers. She visited a camp of tens of thousands of displaced women and children who have fled from Boko Haram. Many of them have seen their own parents lives taken at the hands of terrorists or have been kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery themselves. They are left to face a terrible stigma by their communities upon their return.