Santa Clara University School of Law’s 2006 commencement ceremony is being held on Saturday, May 20th at 9:30 a.m. in the Missions at Santa Clara. Pullitzer Prize winner, Samantha Power, is the 2006 commencement speaker.
Samantha Power is a Professor of Practice in Public Policy at the Carr for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. Her book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction.
Power was the founding executive director of the Carr for Human Rights Policy (1998-2002). From 1993 to 1996, Power covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia as a reporter for the U.S. News and World Report, the Boston Globe, and the Economist. She is the editor, with Graham Allison, of Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact. A graduate of Yale and Harvard, she moved to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine. She has written a new introduction to Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism and has begun work on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia in American foreign policy.
Dean Donald J. Polden remarked, “We are extremely pleased Professor Power will be speaking at this year’s Law Commencement. She is one of the leading commentators and thinkers about international and national government policies that affect the protection of international human rights. Her background and work in public policy and human rights set the stage for what is sure to be a relevant commencement speech and I am pleased that our graduates will have opportunity to hear from her as they begin their work as lawyers and public servants.”