Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and foreign policy advisor to President Obama, won confirmation Thursday as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations with a vote that completes the administration’s foreign policy team for the second term, Los Angeles Times reports.
The outspoken former journalist and human rights advocate was confirmed by a vote of 87 to 10, far more support than critics had predicted after her high-profile career as an author and activist.
“As a longtime champion of human rights and dignity, she will be a fierce advocate for universal rights, fundamental freedoms and U.S. national interests,” Obama said in a statement. “I’m grateful that Samantha will continue to be a vital member of my national security team, and I know that under her leadership our UN mission in New York will continue to represent American diplomacy at its best.”
Power, 42, covered the war in Bosnia in the 1990s as a writer for several newspapers and magazines. After she returned, Power earned a degree at Harvard Law School and wrote about the public policy of human rights.
She is best-known for her 2002 book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” the work that caught Obama’s attention as a new member of the U.S. Senate.
The book pointed out the successes and failures of the United States in responding to mass atrocities, ideas that Power echoed in many public speeches and interviews after its publication.