Good afternoon and welcome to sunday of the 31st annual southern festival of books this festival is presented annually by humidity his tendency and it is is affiliate of the National Endowment of the humanities. Public Financial Support helps make this a free if it and for information on how you can donate please go to communities. Org and before i introduce our featured guest please let me provide a brief logistical information. You should and can visit the tent on legislative plaza and chopper titles by the author lineup. That will certainly include some of the powers new book, the education of an idealist mmr and a portion of book sales and fits the festival. Ambassador power will sign copies of her new book and the author tent which is located was from the nasa tent. Now about her guest. Actress Connie Britton is the boston native. She was raised in virginia and graduated from brockman college. Her feature debut was in the independent film, the brothers mcmullen. A great film. She has since starred in numerous films and Talk Television programs including friday night lights, American Horror story and of course nashville. In 2014, misprint was named a goodwill investor to the United Nations development program. In this role, misprint and will give advocacy to the United Nations efforts to address poverty, empower women, and achieve sustainable development. Some of the powers is the professor of practice at Harvard Kennedy school and harvard law school. From 2013 to 2017, she starred in the cabinet of barack obama and is the youngest ever u. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Investor power began her career is a journalist. She reported from places such is bosnia, eastport, wanda and sudan. She has been named one of times 100 most influential people. On multiple occasions. Her book a problem from hell, america in the edge of genocide, was awarded the awarded a prize in 2003. She is the author of the education of an idealist, mmr, which brings her here today. Please welcome Connie Britton and samantha power. Compact [applause] it is so low. Did you come here for me to break out song. It is so thrilling for me to be back in nashville today with my friends samantha power. And celebrating your incredible new book. Before we start our conversation, will you please read a little bit from your book because it is so great to hear from you book. Soon i think you so much connie. Thank you nashville i love this town. I was spent some time with my ten yearold this morning and he actually got to that kangaroos at the zoo. So thank you nashville. I tried to convince him to go to the giant cast museum but it was a zoo. So im just going to read a short passage, my focus we talked about, is different from any that i tried to write in the past. For starters, has a first person in it and irish people say that irish people have trouble using the first person even in therapy [laughter] and so ive had to overcome a lot. Its heavy no. But tell the story of my coming with my mother to this country windows nine. Is an immigrant from dublin. Becoming later, a correspondent in writing a book that was mentioned about genocide that senator newly elected senator of barack obama and fighting his way into his office and onto his campaign and well talk perhaps than about the subsequent snakes happen at the white house and is the investor but the passage i thought it would be, is from a chapter called yes we can. In now is hard remember but we were senator obama was not supposed to win the democratic nomination to become president and he started running in january 2007, this passage a radius from the spring of 2007. In january 2008, we would with the iowa caucus and exhibits when youre in the book and it was seen then is an amazing upset but this is about seven or eight months before then, and we were not, our campaign was not that of a well oiled machine shall we say. This is just a short passage from men. It gives you some flavor of how i tried to write about service and politics the way it is relatable and acceptable particularly my onion people and young at heart who i hope will embrace the challenge of the current moment. Yes we can. Is i worked at my computer and massachusetts, in the spring of 2007, i received an email that was clearly not intended for me. A university of chicago law professor and Obama Campaign advisor had written quote martha, Business Law Group disaster is in worse than say anything. I had met this gas once before in an academic conference. We had struck up a lively conversation and i learned like me he was an avid squash player and red sox fan but we had not kept in touch. Almost incurably cheerful when youre in our brief interactions of the sour tone about the email campaign law group surprised me. Since it was addressed to harvard marson. I deleted the message and went about my day. I soon realized that i was not the only accidental recipient of katzs private lemons. Neither cass nor i were fulltime nor paid campaign advisors. We were academics who contributed policy ideas by telephone and email to candidate obama his campaign and spoke publicly on his behalf. Obama his paid staff had assembled an Informal Working Group comprised legal scholars to inform his views about and an assortment of impressing issues including how to those the fit to detention facility how to reverse bushs licensing of torture. Obama and cass had been kylix at the university of chicago where the vault taught classes in constitutional law. With the possible Obama Campaign speech in the role of oppression, this group this Informal Group had produced nothing. In expressing his frustration via email cass had mistakenly auto fill the entire senior staff of the Obama Campaign. [laughter] his criticism of the lord group caused wide offense. Annual great new mental took it is an insult to her leadership and forwarded the email to me staying quote cabling this ass hole. A friend of hers, converted part of katzs email into a large poster and hung it on the wall eight quarters. Danielle gray, worse than say anything. I felt forecast. Like most mortals i had severed my own email mishaps. Not long before i set up on a blind date by tom keenan, a friend and fellow professor home id come to know on mass atrocities research. The dates had not gone well. I wrote to dom with rundown of not i do not like about his friend. Asking how he couldve conceivably thought thought that we might get so long. [laughter] i stress that the incompatibility abilities were deep and if enough of the email part is i think is the old staying goes, can only make them dress better excavation and more [laughter] just to divert here from intact, is unknown staying. Other than staying in this email and regarding it for the rest of time, i dont actually know. Im not a mature business coming from but nonetheless, this is what i wrote and assumes i hit send, i heard a thing in my inbox and it was a message i had just sick freshly delivered is an incoming email. Within seconds of that first thing, i heard a second and received a note from tom that simply read, you did it. My head in my hands and slowly typed and did. Tom and i were part of the listserv. It gets much worse. [laughter] part of the listserv of thousands is of genocide survivors activists and scholars. And i had accidentally sick the note 70 the blind date to that whole list. Years later, when i was surfing is u. S. Investor the United Nations, people had received my email most felt exuberantly quote my horse back to me. [laughter] you can only make them dress better. [laughter] is enough for me so i reached out to cassis because i felt so badly because i did something terrible and told him not to field everybody another does something similar person one. And not long thereafter, i married him. [laughter] and our son is sitting right over there and you look against the wall. Declan. [applause] so good snakes come from ecigs occasionally. And i is it too quickly that im ready know how he met because met each other at the white house Correspondents Dinner in in 2117 like that i was introduced to you by a friend of mine who are fanatical friends of pictures and pictures and work with the dealing with the lra yet to meet her is you guys will be a live exactly alike. I was in just also blown away by your grace and intelligence and the immense amounts that you been able to college in your live. I would like to address something thats very important to me. Its so vulnerable and honest. It is so and your insight into your live that is actually assessable and approachable from everybody standpoint is such a generous gift so thank you for that. I want to make a movie out of it. So my question to you is, when we make the movie, where i play you. [laughter] what part of the bo book, what story you like most likely like to tell. Friendship usually has a question in advance. To act but wanted to be a surprise. For me, and a lot of people, we do read about 70 Million People were displaced in the world today especially Climate Change generates this feeling that most of us, you feel very small. For people getting involved in their communities and School Boards and you name it, Political Action of some kind, artist threshold to get over its not the threshold am i sad, isnt it unjust or ingest, and my outrage, if you like people when we are taking on whats going on around us and especially when there is cruelty involved, a lot of people have the reaction of i think the hardest moment is the next moment. What can i do about it. I feel like not of those moments of gradually overcoming that second input is normal stifling the feeling of caring. I think it goes and if conversion moments almost that of the most important. When that springs to mind is i have been an immigrant is limited to this country, by way of fitting in with the move to pittsburgh in 1979, was to do it not the boys my neighborhood were doing to talk about baseball and knowing about baseball but i quickly learned is much is i could. I dropped practicing an american accent talk pittsburgh and i learned that quickly so baseball and american is sort of lingo and i found it as well is i could. That carried me forward and other than wanting to be a professional baseball player myself which i was disabused of that, it was a fantasy. But pretty recently actually. [laughter] but is a teenager, what i do, i would become a sportscaster. That would allow me to be her in this course the whole time. And just enjoy and respondent of the competition and the teams that i love. A pretty much i everything about the statistics in the strategy. Summer after my summer freshman year. I go back to Atlanta Georgia went to Public High School there. I am working in the cbs 2 affiliate in the Sports Department pursuing and this is the mating job to get after freshman year of college. Im taking notes on the San Francisco giants game and in my mind is most important thing it could be doing and i wanted to do it very well. I was going to have the sports package the evening news. On the cbs 2 feed next to her and taking notes on the skin, comes the footage from dancewear. June 1989, im 18 years old, and the students in the square are my edge and they had been protesting for weeks. That went out getting arrested or that went out a major crackdown but is it happened, there i am in the crackdown has just commenced. So the tanks are screaming up the very wide boulevards and making their way into the square and the students are screaming and you can imagine the desperation and the panic and fear and i am there with my pencil. Im so faithful to my task. Yet so heart struck and horrified by what i am seeing. But again what i want to stress from the book is the moment was not a off, going to go back to College Learn mandarin its not going to be a live lawyer and american diplomat. Nothing so presumptuous is that. Just simply, gosh, if inverse time asking myself what is america going to do in response. And when i get back to campus, i change my subscription. Ive been a usa subscriber and always took the sports section and shook the rest in the recycling then. I was not interested in politics or geopolitics certainly. I just subscribed to the merrick New York Times i would underline the names, a new geography pretty well because coming from ireland, and when you are from a small entry you learn geography because monday people have to leave probably including you and we did in fact. But i then, just became serious about learning. It was that gradual. I can do something, it was i should know more, i dont know enough about what is motivating the students are with the government are doing and what we are doing. I think the sense of empathy or whatever was triggered but not in an empowered sense of empathy. I think there is something that is an sequence that is universal provokes. I think a lot of people who been called into action have a similar kinds of transformative moments. Just a moment and then something opens and you proceed from there. Is i read your book, and i have my own version of that moment. Conrad the same time actually but is i read the book, i feel courageous when i read your book because i am so inspired by your courage and by your bravery particularly is a young woman. You obviously have incredible empathy. You divided your entire live in trying to help stop genocide and helps. Atrocities globally. And yet you can face it. So courageously. There are sections of the box i had skimmed over because i cant sleep at night with some of the images that you described. Can you talk a little bit because im just curious about how you know able to enjoy some of the things that you have seen with a kind empathy that you have and yet you continue to go on so courageously. Thank you. Is seen in the book webb onto bosnia in my early 20s not long after graduating from college. Not with ideas and avoid to change the world but just that feeling of i want to do something and initially try to become an aid worker but i had no background or skills subunit a sports reporter, could be a reporter, i glossed over that meant being a workforce on it when i got there, is you know an amazing group, particularly of women were there already were blazed a trail and immensely welcoming. Its nothing like the kind of competitive world of journalism i expected. It depicted everywhere. I was sheltered and taken care of but while i was in bosnia i always had sense, my fortune and i never had sense of woe is me. I can always leave. We were living in 1995, on siege and story about but if you were is arabian, you cannot leave from your past or mid nothing you know trapped. If you are me and yet a process and can be provided flights were open and run was open, you can get out. I guess i felt very kind of lucky to get to be an ambassador on behalf of people and invoices. By then, this was a couple of years and and i was a freelancer for the Washington Post and i was writing for major publications. Having learned of the flight on how to do it. I know, i can leave. So i never worked in terms of the physical fear for my safety, which i had very much in beginning and gradually lost, probably more than was healthy over the course of a couple of years. Initially absent croatia very happily based there. He was more peaceful than what my very first article in bosnia which was on the one you and safe area that was actually safe. Like literally i wrote one puzzle, why is it safe. I want to go to the safe place in bosnia. Gradually get kind of pulled so long again by the community of people who know more than you do and what theyre doing but also they have less severe. So its not the healthiest and love to be part of necessarily but your little bit boiling frog dimension to the physical fear part of it. Actually left in the end in part because i felt like alice my fear altogether. I felt a certain fatalism pretend and my younger brother actually it was four into the me, is the teenager at the time we need called to talk to my mother, an amazing woman who brought me to american my stepfather and with her from ireland, he sighed, since what he doing. What you doing over there. Unrighteously writing about the plate to seize people i dont know what i said back but he was like you are so selfish. Everything about mom. What shes going through. So is another one of those moments that my empathy can only go so far. Not even think about my mother not that im a mother myself i can only imagine what i was putting her through but not this to say, and come back to america having a pretty much relative to people whose stories i am telling i go to law school and something happens to me. Only again, could be just the aftermath of being in a work situation i start feeling sorry for myself with a pit of victim complex or survival complex which is crazy is again i couldve always left there is a scene where i sit down with the mentor of mine who in a partially passed away couple of years ago he was a lifelong u. S. Government official would help refugees and actually set up the un human it. For greater position worked at u. S. Missions to the unit some. In his career and it was john the more i was there and i was complaining and back here no one cares just whining. He says, im sorry i mustve misunderstood, would you like to be cleansed. [laughter] i was like well. So ive always had people in my live that i feel like who gave me that perspective in a voice felt that privilege because we are with people who dont have a voice and where these decisions are getting made, so far above any of our pay grades, and because again i had gone over there with the explicit desire. Had that feeling not being do anything or feeling disempowered and something at least at the end of the day i can feel like i was at least doing something small. That is a great sense of meaning. And selfishly. It is a very fulfilling way to live ones day. By and large, with a couple of exceptions, always had the feeling. The hardest time though, was being at the highest levels of the government, is the president his first human rights advisor in the new un investor but in still of the advisor or like the skunk at the loft Party Intern