Samantha Power, who was encircled with controversy last March after calling Hillary Clinton a ‘monster,’ had plans to visit Fairfield University on Dec. 2, but had to cancel when a man from her past expressed a desire to work with her again.
And the man who offered her a job? Only President-elect Barack Obama.
Power, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and a Harvard professor, is among a group of foreign policy experts that Obama office has selected to help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton’s anticipated nomination as secretary of state.
The Obama transition team’s Web site includes Power’s name as one of 14 members of the Agency Review Team for the State Department.
Due to necessary security checks, Power is required to cancel all public appearances while security checks are in progress, according to a press release.
During the election primary season, the ‘monster’ comment caused her to resign as the senior foreign policy advisor on Obama’s campaign team.’
The news that she is being placed in the transition team, especially in the State Department under which Clinton is expected to head, came as a surprise to many.
Since her comment, however, Power has publicly apologized for insulting her, even satating that she supports many of Clinton’s positions of foreign policy issues.
Power had met Obama in 2005 when the senator contacted her after reading her first book, ‘A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,’ which won a Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2003.
History Professor David McFadden, who is teaching a class ‘Historical Perspectives of Contemporary Global Crises’ with Power’s book, was not alarmed to hear that her appearance at Fairfield had been cancelled.
‘It does not surprise me that she is involved in Obama’s transition team, as she was one of his key foreign policy advisors during the campaign,’ he said.
Power was coming to Fairfield as part of the Inspired Writers Series, sponsored by University College, to talk about her book ‘Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World’ that was released this year. The book tells the story of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy Vieira de Mello, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad.
As part of the Agency Review Team, Power, with others, will be reviewing key departments, agencies and commissions of the United States government, as well as the White House, to provide the president-elect, vice president-elect and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration.’
Proponents of the transition team will be selected as cabinet members, national security and federal law enforcement officials, non-career appointments, and other heads of agencies in the executive branch.
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