Inspired by Samantha Power

I have been hearing that Harvard is the best place to make valuable connections. During August, I was continuously wondering the extent of this statement, but when I got here, it started to make slightly more sense. During my first week in Harvard, I was lucky enough to have met the President of Harvard University, Drew Faust, and joined an Economics class where the professor, Gregory Mankiw, was a senior political advisor for George Bush in 2004, and dishes out his own textbook for his class.
I am not going to brag about all the status people hold, which I think is irrelevant. What I find thrilling is having access to people who have made some sort of a difference in society. These people aren't here to only pose for photos or give autographs, but to inspire a generation. One of the people who is an inspiration to me is Samantha Power, a Professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, A Pulitzer Prize winner for her book on the Rwanda Genocide, and author to many other books. I am in her seminar with 14 other people, where we discuss her upcoming book on a UN envoy who got killed in Iraq in 2003.
Samantha Power is one of the most intelligent people I have met. Time Magazine named her as one of the top scientists and thinkers of 2004, and she is a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, a US Presidential candidate. However, my fascination doesn't come from her 100-page-long resume or the extensive connection she has in world politics. As an individual, Samantha Power has made significant difference, and through her work has changed people's lives.
Before getting into politics and academia, Power was a journalist, where she covered the Bosnian genocide, and then went to the Balkans to cover the wars there. Such a job is extremely frustrating; especially when someone is in the middle of a conflict that shouldn't be happening, and cannot do anything but write about it. Samantha Power thinks otherwise. She sees her role as a journalist was not to end wars, but to write about it and convince some policymakers to act upon atrocities that take place. Through writing about atrocities, she aims to affect bureaucrats who allow genocides to take place, especially powers like the United States. Power is an individual who sees great power to change course of events in the hands of politicians, and with her work she aims to make governments respond quickly to atrocities. She is an individual who fights for human rights using words, her way of making a difference.
I debate with Samantha Power on the role the United Nations plays in confronting those who commit atrocities, we discuss on how the UN can be fixed, and even get a chance to propose ways of reforming the United Nations and its bodies. But more than this, I learn from Samantha Power herself. Samantha Power is not a theorist, or just an academia who writes about political history. She writes with a purpose, a purpose to change society and not just highlight that bad things are happening, but bad things are being allowed to happen.
Can she change society? Well, her books, especially 'A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide' has shaken the world's opinion about genocide, and she advises a possible future American President, Obama, on UN reforms and the Darfur crisis.
While we contemplate about how successful she might be, I will go and do my reading for her seminar on Sergio Vieira De Mello, UN's most respected civil servant who was blown up by a suicide bomber in Iraq in August 2003. This book that I am reading, 'Chasing the flame,' will be released in February 2008.