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Samantha Power: Profiled in NYT after monster slip

SAMANTHA POWER strode across the packed room and took a seat, her long sweep of red hair settling around her like a protective shawl. The audience, filled with human rights students and other assorted admirers, stilled, and took her in. There she was, at New York University, back on American soil and miraculously intact, despite having just weathered the most bruising, spectacularly public — and perhaps first — setback in her seemingly unstoppable career.

Ms. Power, who is 37, is a Pulitzer-winning author, impassioned champion of human rights, noted war journalist, Harvard professor and, of late, half of a newly forged power couple whose formation has set academic circles abuzz. Until two Fridays ago, she was also a senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Barack Obama, but abruptly resigned after calling Mr. Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, “a monster.” Right-wing pundits crowed and New York’s tabloids pounced. The Daily News ran a shot of Ms. Power in an evening gown with the headline “Pretty Dumb!”

On Monday night, Ms. Power made a scheduled appearance at the N.Y.U. Center for Global Affairs after flying in from Dublin. She spoke about her new book, “Chasing the Flame” (Penguin Press), a profile of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations envoy killed in a 2003 Baghdad bombing. Ms. Power’s companion, Prof. Cass R. Sunstein, a prominent law professor at the University of Chicago, was with her, though he slipped out before her talk began....
Read entire article at NYT