United States ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, J.D. ’99, will deliver the Harvard Kennedy School’s Commencement Address on May 28. Power, who was founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS from 1998 to 2002 and subsequently served there as Lind professor of the practice of global leadership and public policy, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for her book, Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, reviewed in Harvard Magazine in 2002. The author of three other books has been outspoken about America’s changing role in the world and the resulting implications for foreign policy; before becoming ambassador to the UN, she served the Obama administration as special assistant to the president and as senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the National Security Council.
The HKS talk will not be Power’s first engagement as a Harvard Commencement week speaker. She spoke at Harvard Law School’s Class Day in 2010.
