After high school, Power attended Yale, where she fed her sports obsession, playing squash, covering volleyball for the school paper, and scoring a slot on WYBC’s radio program, Sports Spotlight. “It was me and all the guys, and I had a crush on the head of the little, mini sports department,” Power says. She would likely be at ESPN today, except that in the summer of 1989, while interning at an Atlanta TV station, she happened to see a raw satellite feed that showed Chinese government forces cracking down on protesters. When she returned to Yale, she had transitioned. “I had a nascent idealism,” she explains. “I became a history major and just got very interested in what was going on.”
その後、ボスニア紛争やルワンダの虐殺などを経験して、A Problem from Hellという本に結実するのですが、Anne-Marie Slaughterさんがハーバード大学での彼女の教授だったんですね。
What was going on in 1992, the year she graduated, was the Bosnian War. The U.N., with a mandate to keep peace, was standing around as Serbian forces killed Bosnian Muslims by the thousands. Power managed to get herself to Sarajevo and scrambled for work, eventually becoming a freelance war correspondent. “She was eager to learn and just wicked smart,” says Laura Pitter, senior counterterrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch, who had arrived six months earlier. The two shared armored cars, used car batteries to power laptops, and lived in Sarajevo’s infamously bombed-out Holiday Inn. Power eventually began stringing for The Washington Post. “It was just brutal,” says Power, who was witnessing the U.N. operating in the world for the first time. “It was just like, ‘Why are you letting these people die? I mean, your soldiers are there.’ ”
Meanwhile, yet another genocide had occurred, in Rwanda, in which an estimated 800,000 people had been killed. The U.S. government’s failure to intervene set Power to writing A Problem from Hell, her 2002 book that traces the history of American foreign policy since World War II and explores U.S. government inaction in the face of genocide. Anne-Marie Slaughter, then Power’s professor at Harvard Law School and later her Obama administration colleague, remembers Power’s being consumed with the book, which started as a paper. “She did something no one else had done and really made us see that issue differently,” says Slaughter, who is now president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.
A Problem from Hell, which would become a best-seller and win Power her Pulitzer, made her not just a foreign policy wonk of high renown but a kind of star among young people. “She has had more influence on the career paths of young women in public policy schools around the world than almost any other single figure,” says her friend Michael Ignatieff, the former leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto. “I’ve got students who say ‘I want to go into human rights because of A Problem from Hell.’ ”
Vogueの記事で積読状態になっていたA Problem from Hellを読みましたが、トルコのアルメニア人の虐殺からアメリカという国は人道的介入に及び腰であったと主張する本で、カンボジアやイラクなど各時代でのアメリカの対応を、Genocideという言葉を生み出したRaphael Lemnikの取り組みを縦軸にしてまとめた大変スケールの大きい本でした。ピューリツァー賞の受賞もうなづけるものです。
She became a congressional staffer after a now-famous dinner with then-Senator Barack Obama, which, as is often told, involved the senator’s calling her after reading her book. In Power’s version, Senator Obama showed up at a steak house purely on a staffer’s urging. “He was late and just seemed completely not psyched to be there and seemed like, ‘Why did I have this meeting set up again?’ ” she remembers. But their chemistry was instantaneous, and a few hours later, she was signed on. By 2008, she was foreign policy adviser on a winning presidential campaign.
******** After the election, President Obama quietly appointed her his special assistant and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, and Power went on to establish herself as a driven policy person who formed, at the president’s request, a commission called the Atrocities Prevention Board—an attempt to build a human rights perspective into U.S. foreign policy. She also became known among her colleagues for producing two children—her son, Declan, born in 2009, and daughter, Rían, in 2012—while somehow keeping up with White House demands. Gayle Smith, a senior director at the NSC, describes her as that person who’d just barely arrive at the morning meeting, looking for a pen, and yet was on it, seemingly balanced, or as balanced as anyone can be. “She has a great sense of the ridiculous,” says Smith. “The sheer ludicrousness of the kinds of hours one keeps here. . . . I mean, how do you deal with one of the most pressing issues that may be unfolding on the planet when your kid just threw up on his playmate?”
これだけの激務をこなしながら二人の小さなお子さんを育てるのは大変でしょう。やはりwork life balanceの難しさを語っています。オバマ政権が終わる頃には学校に通い始めるようですが、公務は少し休むのかもしれませんね。
Power’s new role, maybe even more than her last, doesn’t allow for many of these family moments. “The work-life balance is the thing I struggle with most,” she says. “When this job came available, it was such an incredible opportunity to work so closely with the president. But everything’s a cost-benefit, right? And the benefits of this and the influence of this job are sufficiently great that there were more costs I was willing to take on the family side.” As committed as she is to her new post, she can see the end of President Obama’s term. “I think about it every day, when Rían will be four and Declan will be eight. It’s just my sense of when a different kind of prioritization can kick in.”
VogueのAnnie Leibovitzが撮影した写真にあったキャプションが以下です。
Liberal hawk, human-rights champion, mother of two—Samantha Power takes on the job of a lifetime as America’s ambassador to the U.N.
Liberal hawkという言葉が象徴しているように、軍事力を行使するという面においてはブッシュ=チェイニーと何ら変わりがないことになってしまわないか心配です。もちろん、彼女の本を読むと人道的介入は不可欠だと思わされるのですが、だからといって軍事力を積極的に行使していいのかは自分としては躊躇してしまいます。ええ、独裁や弾圧がいけないとは思っていますけど。。。Shutdown騒動があったようにその前にそんな軍事作戦を実行する資金がないというアメリカの現実が立ちはだかっているので、歯止めはあるのですが。。。
A Problem from Hellは国連英検に興味がある方にはオススメの本です。お固い国際関係の本とは違って、読ませる本です。
LOS ANGELES — As very early box-office numbers for “The Great Gatsby” rolled in — a strong $3.25 million from the Thursday late-night shows, Warner Brothers said on Friday morning — it was already becoming clear that the audience has a mind of its own.
More than a few critics were rough on the film. (“There may be worse movies this summer than ‘The Great Gatsby,’ but there won’t be a more crushing disappointment,” wrote Peter Travers, who reviewed it for Rolling Stone.) But Friday morning found Hollywood’s box office watchers privately predicting opening weekend numbers even higher than the $40 million or so being publicly bandied about in various reports.
(グーテンベルクから) Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air.
ONE THING'S SURE AND NOTHING'S SURER THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET--CHILDREN. IN THE MEANTIME, IN BETWEEN TIME----
As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most with its fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn't be over-dreamed--that voice was a deathless song.
They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.
Earlier in the year she worked with the antic Spike Jonze on the science-fiction romance Her, and with writer-director David Lowery on the independent Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a love story set in the seventies in the hills of Texas. Meanwhile, her fourth project of 2012, Steven Soderbergh’s suspenseful thriller Side Effects, is released this month.
“It’s been very strange, jumping from one character to the next,” says the chameleon Mara. “All four of them were very intense experiences. . . . I really feel sometimes like those things are happening to me. Obviously they’re not. But it’s hard going from one to the next.
(オックスフォード) chameleon 1 a small lizard (= a type of reptile ) that can change color according to its surroundings 2 (often disapproving) a person who changes their behavior or opinions according to the situation a social/political chameleon
“And I’m hypercritical of myself,” she adds in a masterpiece of understatement. “Anytime I see anything I’ve done, I wish that it had gone differently because you figure it out as you go along, and you’re always discovering new things. I’d probably feel that way about anything that I did.”
シャイであることは彼女が女優になった要因の一つでもあったようです。「自分らしくあれ」ということが社会要請としてありますが、I can be someone else.というベクトルも芸術の分野ならむしろプラスに働くようですね。 And yet, a surprising degree of personal shyness has clung to the actress since early childhood. “I think that’s part of the reason I like acting,” Mara explains. “I can be someone else. I get to express a lot of things that maybe are hard for me to express in my normal life.” She relishes a role with an accent for this reason: “I just find it easier to lose yourself. I’d really rather hide behind the character. It’s like a party trick! Not that I go to parties.”
そんな彼女なので、プレミア試写会のようなものは苦手でnightmareと語っています。When we wrap a film and everyone claps and cheers, I turn redと撮影終わりのクランクアップでのスタッフのねぎらいでも赤面してしまうと言っていますね。
In fact, she finds the whole red-carpet experience “a nightmare! It’s a panic attack waiting to happen. I don’t even like people to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. When we wrap a film and everyone claps and cheers, I turn red. And then I have to walk out onto the middle of this carpet and there are all these photographers, and they’re all screaming at you. And usually there’s a party at the other end of it, so it’s not even like I have solace at the end of the carpet! It’s like then I have to walk into my other nightmare!”
シャイである彼女ですが、for someone who loves to eavesdrop and people-watch, I feel like in the city you can be very alone and disappear.とありますから人間に対する興味は強そうですね。日本語でも「人間観察」と言いますが、英語でもpeople-watchなんですね。また、I think part of the reason is I’m like a sponge. If I’m in a group, I get exhausted immediately picking up everyone’s feelings. If they’re sad, I take it all on, and I can feel it. とあるので、人間の感情に対する感受性の高さもあるようです。というよりも感受性が強すぎてしまうので人が多いと疲れてしまうようです。
On the other hand, her roots are in New York. She was raised in Westchester and went to college in the city—and she plans to return east one day. “For me, the seasons are so powerful. The smell of the fall or the spring, it brings back so much.” And “for someone who loves to eavesdrop and people-watch,” she adds, “I feel like in the city you can be very alone and disappear. And so I love that because I like to be alone a lot. I think part of the reason is I’m like a sponge. If I’m in a group, I get exhausted immediately picking up everyone’s feelings. If they’re sad, I take it all on, and I can feel it.” Although it’s useful for her craft, “it’s just not that useful for life!” she says. “I’ll go to the grocery store or something, and come home and be exhausted because I’ve really picked up someone else’s sadness or shame . . . anything. It really affects me. I’ve had to figure out a way to turn that off, and that makes me a little bit more guarded.”
Eventually Mara found a place at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she was able to create her own major. “I was just so uninspired in a regular classroom,” she remembers. She took a course called Writing About Africa and did a research paper on child soldiers that inspired her to travel to the continent to volunteer. She ended up working in an orphanage in Nairobi’s Kibera, an enormous slum, where it is believed a million people live in one square mile of squalor. “It was very . . . surreal,” she remembers of her first few days. “I just felt so overwhelmed, hopeless. But it was an incredible experience, and I formed this amazing bond with a lot of the kids there.” Back at NYU, she organized her curriculum around creating a nonprofit, now the Uweza Aid Foundation.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to change the way things were there,” she says, “but at least I could help the few kids that I grew to love and care about.” Mara’s foundation has created a boys’ and girls’ community center in Kibera. “We have a soccer league and a journalism program, an art program, and tutoring. It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s not changing hundreds of thousands of lives, but it’s something. And for those kids that go there and get to go to soccer every week, it means a lot to them.
彼女がPresidentとBoard of Directorsを務めるUweza Aid Foundationのサイトを訪れてみましたが、彼女の存在が分かるのはOur Teamというコーナーだけで、他はケニアの子供たちとNGOの団体の活動が紹介されているだけでした。「わ~た~し、ボランティアしている心やさしいわ~た~し」といった安っぽい人間ではない人がハリウッドにいるとほっとしますね。
Rooney Mara President, Board of Directors Rooney founded an organization called Faces of Kibera in 2007 after first traveling to Kenya in 2006. She has returned several times since then and Faces of Kibera and Uweza have worked closely on joint projects. In 2011, the two organizations decided to pool resources and merge to work more efficiently and effectively.
(団体の紹介文) Introduction To Uweza
Uweza is Kiswahili for ability and power. Uweza Foundation fights the cycle of poverty that persists in Kenya's Kibera slum. We nurture and build upon the already existing capabilities and resourcefulness of Kenyans through community-based empowerment programs. All of our projects are developed and/or run by Kenyans, primarily residents of Kibera who are dedicated to the betterment of their community.
Uweza is a 501(c)(3) organization registered in the State of Illinois and a registered NGO in Kenya. Current projects include a soccer academy, journalism and art clubs, traditional dancing group, educational sponsorship, and life skills training.
Dear Applicant: we are pleased to inform you that upon review of your application for tax exempt status we have determined that you are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to you are deductible under section 170 of the Code. You are also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests, devises, transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106 or 2522 of the Code. Because this letter could help resolve any questions regarding your exempt status, you should keep it in your permanent records.
Organizations exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Code are further classified as either public charities or private foundations. We determined that you are a public charity under the Code section(s) listed in the heading of this letter.
Shortly before the end of your advance ruling period, we will send you Form. 8734, Support Schedule for Advance Ruling Period. You will have 90 days after the end of your advance ruling period to return the completed form. We will then notify you, in writing, about your public charity status.
Please see enclosed Publication 4221-PC, Compliance Guide for 501(c)(3) Public Charities, for some helpful information about your responsibilities as an exempt organization.
今回のVogueの記事とこのような通知レターを見比べるとはっきりしますが、そもそも扱われているものが違うんですよね。I feel like in the city you can be very alone and disappear.のような心情を吐露するものと、税控除御の告知文では次元が違うのは明らかですよね。