Samantha Power

To kick off its 2004-05 program on ethics in politics, Latin’s Initiative For Ethics will welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor Samantha Power to the school on Friday, November 12th.

Power will address the issue of “Genocide and the Ethics of Intervention” during an afternoon Upper School assembly. At a reception following the assembly, Power will answer questions and sign copies of her recent book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award.

A lecturer at the Kennedy School of Harvard University, Power was the founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. From 1993 to 1996 she covered the wars in former Yugoslavia as a reporter for U.S. News and World Report, The Boston Globe, and The Economist.

A Problem from Hell, Power’s first book, is a scholarly analysis of America’s policy towards genocide. In looking at the United States’ response to atrocities in countries such as Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda, her book asks the question: “Why do American leaders who vow ‘never again’ repeatedly fail to stop genocide?”

Latin’s Initiative For Ethics (LIFE), launched during the 2002-03 school year, is a four-year curricular and extra-curricular program designed to provide a framework for the ongoing study of contemporary ethics issues. In its inaugural year, LIFE focused on ethics in journalism, followed by an examination of contemporary bioethics issues. This year the program addresses ethics in politics. And in its final year, LIFE will look at professional ethics.

© 2008 The Latin School of Chicago

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