Served as the special assistant for human rights and began her career as a journalist reporting from places such as bosnia, kosovo and zimbabwe and was the director for the human rights policy at the kennedy s school. Her book a problem from hell was the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 also the author of the bestselling book the fight to save the world and o the most recent book we wl bebeec discussing today the education of an idealist is was published by harpercollins in september of this year and ive just learned it is shortlisted for the irish book prize. Congratulations. [applause] and one more time please join me in welcoming samantha power. [applause] theres a reason this is my first trip to austin. We are going to start off the session with a brief reading. I want to set the stage for the conversation and i thought the reading i would do today is one that speaks to the challenges that we are facing figuring out how to engage with people that we disagree with vehemently so this is the scene from a chapter called upside down land and of my relationship with the russian ambassador. I had invested long hours forging a relationship with russias ambassador to the United Nations. Because russia held one of five vetoes at the Security Council its vote was critical if we were to get the council to send peacekeepers to the conflict areas imposed sanctions on wrongdoers or condemn the coup. In order for them to have a meaningful impact on then issues of war and peace, the United States and russia have to be willing to make deals. They didnt have the option of remaining at arms length. They had only recently go gotteo know me during our negotiations over the chemical weapons resolution that was dismantling the majority of the stockpile. But i have known them far longer having watched them in action in the 1990s during the war. I had occasionally been in the pack of surrounding him. They seem to relish these engagements and eloquently delivering while simultaneously insisting upon his own complete objectivity i remember being struck by the fact his english was so fluid he quoted lines and made english poems but Something Else impressed me more after the massacre of sarajevo market goers, they have been pivotal in convincing them to move thei awy from the nations capital. Toomey alsto me it also indicata promising independent streak. It became the un ambassador in 2006 and seemed to be a permanent fixture. He had sparred with myy predecessor when she had been ambassador to the become friendly. In the last meeting together, she had roared with laughter when he presented her a statement expressing relief that her departure. The markup also sends condolences to the otherec Security Council, the national Security Council she would share of the National Security advisor. Id already come to respect the talent. He brought procedural wisdom and textual creativity to the chemical weapons discussions but he listened with careful intensity when he wasnt storming out of the meetings, he was good at bridging gaps. Significantly also valued u. S. Russian cooperation from his time as an interpreter in the arms control negotiations in the cold war, he had drawn a lesson even when the overall relationship in the u. S. Was strained, they could carve out this great areas for progress and try to build momentum. I knew he also pushed for compromises that moscow was eddisinclined to make. We always took each others calls and we would do our best to reconcile positions that would on the face irreconcilable. As i got to know him ily wonderd how he could stand working for putinal and why he hadnt resigd somewhere along the way even though people that crossed and often endedl up jailed or killed i didnt think that he stayed because h she was intimidated. Instead, the most memorable charge of the light brigade would often come to mind. There is not to make reply or reason why, but to do and die. Hed been a child actor and soviet films and had come of age during the competition with the u. S. Like many proud russians, he embraced the goal of raising russia from its knees even if evthe leaders actions made him uncomfortable, he would go on serving his country. Whether diplomats spoke in monotone they had generic talking points. Some have been receiving instruction from the capital for so long that they seem to have suspended thinking for themselves but he was different from the greatness as a hockey player two would arise would mean for the world even when discussing issues of which russia has Little Council supportt he seemed to be like playing the role of underdog and was a masterful storyteller with an often irreverent sense of humor. When i once went on too long speaking before the council, he responded, quote, after hearing all that the representatives of the United States told she needed to share with us today, i am tempted to read my statement twice. On another occasion i told him i knew he had mixed motives have sincere and half alternative. We are fully sincere about achieving our old career motives. [laughter]to i. E. Invited them to my parents home for thanksgiving making him the only coffee at inter tonight wild family. When they arrived, she immediately sat down on the carpet and began playing with my children while my stepfather taught russian history and literature. To describe wha what you are mot thankful for, he said, quote, peace between the two countries. Whatever happens, we must preserve that. Eni like and respect him but i also spent much of my time at the United Nations and pitched public battles w with him. Thank you. [applause] thank you for that. I have two thoughts in my head. When somebody says to me 550 page political biography, i dont think funny. This is a funny book. Why was it important to you, im assuming it was a to vie time tw this with your sense of humor . Ive never been asked that question before. I was trying to offer a recounting of these stages of my life and career in a manner that was as true to life as possible and growing up in an irish family where you cant get a word in addin or if you dont have something funny or interesting to say recounting as true to life as i could recounting the humor as well as the poignancy and sadness. I really wanted to render when you get into darker topics like the policy issues we are dealing with when i invite Obama Administrationon but even as you are managing those issues its like all a few tha of you that g with serious things in yourth le they are still human beings attempting to figure out what to do and when you feel like you are about to tear your hair out it will lighten the mood and maybe unlock thoughts or banter or comfort that then createsat a space where other people will put forth ideas they kept himself. The storyro of father being a wr correspondent for an activist working in the government needed to be or do any of those things to see the kind of universal truth in what was happening. I thought as true to life as i could make it that command as much humor as i could remember and that depended a lot on my journals and j my memory so a lt more funny happened in my life then you will see in the books just so you know. Part of the challenge writing a memoir, this is very new to me. We have a saying ive heard people have trouble using the first person even in therapy and certainly that was my experience as you will read in the book, my challenges with therapy. But as i wrote i was initially pretty buttoned up and the idea of not only describing what happened at the time im used to being in my former journalistic days make the plot moved and my books dont tend to be that short, but they tend to move i hope and propel people forward and im very sensitive to that as im editing and writing so always made people compulsively want to turn the page. But suddenly i would hand these pages over to my husband were Close Friends and they would say you have to actually tell us whats going on. It just needs to move but luckily i kept a journal for all these years and it would have been very hard for me retrospectively to project back to what i felt discovering a mass grave in darfur or getting dumped from somebody i really liked or it would have been very hard. I was able in a way to my own subconscious i began to open up and do what you need to do in a memoir which is offered as much as you can into the persons who happened to be. So i did that but then i lost my sense of where the line should be drawn. There is a dignity constraint to this so when you ask whats not in the book as it is famously said just because something thag happened doesnt mean everybody else would find it interesting to learn about just becaus it je its interesting to you doesnt mean its interesting to somebody else, so subjecting whatever you are including two that criteria. An active part of how i describe dynamics in my sons classrooms. You only need one or two anecdotes for that to be evident. You dont need to be in my life entirely. To try to entice everybody in the crowd to read the book compulsively. Therefore i think that i would like if we could touch on some of the major parts of your life starting with something we breezed by earlier which is growing up in a dublin pub and i didnt sleep there just to be clear. I am from ireland originally. Both my parents are irish. My mother for the whole life growing up she wanted to be a medical doctor but in that age group that generation wasnt encouraged or allowed to do science so when it came time to college which she became the first among her sisters and her big Irish Catholic family to do, she was told not to do medicine because she didnt have a science background so she decided to get the science background in college and in ireland you do medicine as an undergrad degree and you become a doctor earlier so she got her bachelors of science and then a phd in biochemistry, shes a complete trailblazer, my hero, very funny, great athlete. She played field hockey and tennis. Remarkable woman but all she wanted to do is be a doctor. Not long after i was born in those days especially very late she decided to go back to medical school so because she was in medical school and this was in dublin, i spent a lot of those years with my father who was immensely loving, full of opinions and ideas that was an alcoholic and kind of an alcoholic almost as a vocation. He had been a dentist and his practice had kind of fallen apart and he went to one particular pub i write about in the book and i was a sidekick. I would read in the basement and my mother ofmy course was alerto the risks of this but culturally felt different than it would feel to my mother or to me so as she was trying to do her residency and all that is required to become a doctor i was living a close relationship with my father and it wasnt the ideal environment for a child. Was brought into the United States and what did you expect to find cracks the alcohol took its toll on my parents marriage and a mother and father wanted to split up from each other but my mother particularly wasnt a fan of the pub or the drink into a certain point drew the line when it came to me and my younger brother spending so much time there but also she met a man she did want to be with who has been my stepfather now for 40 years. His name is eddie and hes very funny, the funniest character in the book as a whole and a great irish one of those storytellers before they get to the punchline just the way they told the stories tears streaming down their faces. She fell in love with him working at the hospital in dublin and that would be fine in most countries at that time at least in most western democracies but ireland you are not allowewerenot allowed to geo the only way to really go further also in the field of medicine she was interested in, kidney transplants but also the only way to separate from my father in the way she wanted to to be with my now stepfather was to move to america because when you come here if you are here long enough you can get a divorce and that was a major factor. Subsequent to that of ten years later there was a referendum on divorce in ireland and believe it or not the referendum failed. It was close but not that close and many of my mothers sisters i remember my mother pulling her hair out because several of her sisters voted against divorce if you can believe that even though they were close to her and sympathetic with what she had gone through and one of their lines was i had to stay with my, everybody else should have to do the same. [laughter] so there is a bit of that but then ultimately as you know it did pass when given a Second Chance and now people are able to follow their heart and do also with the times is best for their children but it was a combination of divorce and ambition, professional, medical books when we came i had no idea we were immigrating. My mother even years later it would have been before she realized we are not going back. You got a haircut, practiced your american accent, you love sports, you followed the teams religiously. And in particular . When the pirates were winning the world series in this steelers were winning the super bowl. I had a long ponytail and i memorize and learn everything there was to know about basebalk statistics. My teeth rotted with the pink gum some of you remember from the baseball cards, no regret about that pink gum. But i just threw myself into the american life. Fast forward a bit, what turned you on to the idea that Current Events were imported . I will share this story i would say even in my 20s i probably would have looked back on this moment as pivotal but when i went back to my journals to examine it in depth, i learned at the moment im about to describe the time was almost swallowed up in selfdoubt for the moment was taking notes on the Atlanta Braves at the sports affiliate in Atlanta Georgia where is where ive gone to high school with my mother when she finished her residency that she had to redo them to go to atlanta to practice as a transplant physician with eddie who was in the same field. So we moved and i got a dream i was taking there notes on a baseball game. What could be a better way to spend your summer. And in a video for the band and one of those booths where you have the tv screens all around. It was cbs, so from around the world london, moscow, cairo and beijing. The feed from beijing had been depicting peaceful protests by students my age contesting the form of rule that the Chinese Communist party was exercising and asking for freedom of speech and freedom of association. Some of you remember these protests. Protests. But i forgowhat i forgot even hy were allowed towh go on without being suppressed. But the day that i happened to be there taking notes on this particular game so took the highlights for the news, the footage of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square was brought up on the feed. I was there and again in my memory off this island it was absolutely Crystal Clear i was going to go forth and resolve to do something, try to do something bigger and my wife in fact while i remember it like it was five minutes ago my journals were filled with this recounting of what i have seen but very quickly followed by what do i have to offer. Im not going to be able to do anything about this but i was for the first time in that moment asking the question of what the u. S. Government was going to do, what the world in the International Community or phrase that i had forsworn long ago because it just ends up being the sum of the countries and their leaders and social movements within it but nonetheless at the time i was asking what is someone going to do, but that the moment it wasnt a great resolve myself because i think that would have been too presumptuous and involved me putting myself in a galaxy so far away i was ill equipped to know what was happening in the world never mind there might be a pathway after college to make a difference. All that really happened in a moment after this i went back to campus in my sophomore year and became a more serious student, more interested in history and politics and ioo took classes of the kind they hadnt been taking before. And i ended my subscription tond usa today. The only reason i have even read it my freshman year as i used to clip with my fingers to read section which was the sports section. And i would toss the rest of the paper into the recycling bin which says nothing actually about the quality of usa today at the time. It was just more my singleminded obsession with sports. So i changed my, subscription to the times and then i wish i had some of these papers that i underwent every article and the names of the leaders. Ii knew geography well because n ireland you have to prepare for the fact that he will have to yo immigrate and know where the other countries where. [laughter] boxlike World Leaders wit at the history, i didnt know any of that. We are very motivated to learn more but again it would have been a big leap to imagine that one day there would be a path to do something in thiss world. Learnthat was the idea to more but the idea is to see more. One idea throug for the book whr you are a war correspondent or working at the un, the importance of bearing witness and actually see what feeds on the ground with your own eyes or somebody onn the team seeing wht is going on. Why is that of crucial importance not just of policymaking, that being part of humanity . I should say that in my early 20s, my first and barking on training to do something we became a freelance journalist which i tell them the book which involved doing unethical things and basically forging a credential of the letter to the Un Press Pass to do the right thing so you can see the hypocrisy an of how singlemindd again i was becoming in this goal of learning more and by then i was already trying to learn about what was happening but i desperately wanted to get over there. My only path was as a freelance journalist. So we mentione i mentioned it it of your question because i think in the early 20s to have that experience of witnessing what was unfolding in a major ethnic conflict being perpetrated against people on the basis of their ethnicityai and religion once youve had the experience of seeing it with yourin own eys you become i dont want to say skeptical of secondhand reporting. I still devour every page of the New York Times that they would have well before