Anne-Marie Slaughter


Anne-Marie Slaughter is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist and public commentator. She received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1980, an M.Phil. from Worcester College, Oxford in 1982, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985, and a D.Phil. in international relations from Oxford in 1992. She is a member of the International Law Association, American Society of International Law, American Bar Association, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and World Peace Foundation. During her academic career, she has taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University. From 2002 to 2009, she was the Dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs. She was subsequently the first woman to serve as the Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department from January 2009 until February 2011 under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is a former president of the American Society of International Law and the current President and CEO of New America. She married Princeton professor Andrew Moravcsik; they live in Princeton with their two sons.
She has received many awards for her work over the years such as: the Woodrow Wilson School R.W. van de Velde Award, 1979; the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Law, University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2007; Distinguished Service Medal, U.S. Secretary of state 2011; Louis B. Sohn Award for Public International Law, American Bar association, 2012.
Slaughter is an experienced author and editor, having worked on eight books, including A New World Order ; The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World ; Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family ; her latest work The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Dangerous World, and countless scholarly articles. She revived a national debate over gender equality in the 21st century in an article in The Atlantic titled "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All". It addressed the difficulties women still face in finding a balance between a fulfilling career and family life. Slaughter is on the Global Advisory Board for Oxford University's journal on "Global Summitry: Politics, Economics, and Law in International Governance."

Early life, family and honors

Slaughter was born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, the daughter of a Belgian mother, Anne Marie Denise Limbosch, and an American father, Edward Ratliff Slaughter Jr., a lawyer. Her paternal grandfather was Edward Slaughter, a football player, athletic coach, and professor of physical education. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who once went by Anne-Marie Burley, was a matron of honor at Jeffrey Toobin's wedding. She is married to Princeton politics professor Andrew Moravcsik, with whom she has two children: Alex and Michael Moravcsik
Slaughter is a 1976 graduate of St. Anne's-Belfield School in Charlottesville, Virginia. She graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1980, where she also received a certificate in European Cultural Studies. As part of her undergraduate degree, she completed a 138-page long senior thesis titled "Creativity and Change: The Cultural Opposition and Soviet Reform: Implications for United States Human Rights Policy." Mentored by Richard H. Ullman, she won the Daniel M. Sachs Memorial Scholarship, one of Princeton's top honors, which provides for two years of study at Worcester College, Oxford. After receiving her M.Phil. in International Affairs from Oxford in 1982, she studied at Harvard Law School and graduated cum laude with a J.D. in 1985. She continued at Harvard after graduation as a researcher for her academic mentor, the international lawyer Abram Chayes. In 1992, she received her D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford.
Slaughter has received an honorary degree from the University of Miami in 2006, the University of Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Medal in 2007, the University of Warwick in 2013, and Tufts University in 2014; she was the Commencement speaker that year at Tufts. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Academic career

Scholarship and teaching

Slaughter served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School from 1989–1994 and then as J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law on the faculty of Harvard Law School from 1994 to 2002. She then moved to Princeton to serve as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, the first woman to hold that position. She held that post from 2002 to 2009, when she accepted an appointment at the US State Department. During the academic year 2007–2008, Slaughter was a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Affairs. In 2011, she returned to Princeton as a professor.
As a scholar, Slaughter has had a focus on integrating the study of international relations and international law, using international relations theory in international legal theory. In addition, she has written extensively on European Union politics, network theories of world politics, transjudicial communication, liberal theories of international law and international relations, American foreign policy, international law, and various types of policy analysis. She has written books: International Law and International Relations, A New World Order, The Idea that is America: Keeping Faith with our Values in a Dangerous World, and The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century , as well as three edited volumes on international relations and international law, and over one hundred extended articles in scholarly and policy journals or books.
At Princeton University, she holds joint appointments with the Politics Department and the Woodrow Wilson School, where she teaches and advises PhD, Masters and undergraduate students.

Administration

Slaughter was Director of the International Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School from 1994–2002, and a Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government from 2001–2002.
During her tenure as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, she was credited with vigorously building the faculty, research and teaching activities of the school. She expanded the school by 30%, adding scholars from history, sociology, engineering and the natural sciences, and expanded the School's Masters in Public Policy Program to include medical doctors, lawyers, and Ph.D. scientists. She was credited with rebuilding Princeton's international relations faculty, including hiring a bevy of well-respected senior scholars including Robert Keohane, Helen Milner, and G. John Ikenberry. She also retained or hired influential right-of-center scholars including Aaron Friedberg and Thomas Christensen. Slaughter was responsible for the creation of several research centers in international political economy and national security, the joint Ph.D. program in Social Policy, the Global Fellows program, and the Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative.
In late 2005, over 100 Princeton students and faculty signed an open letter to Slaughter and Princeton president Shirley Tilghman criticizing the University in general and the Woodrow Wilson School in particular of biasing selection of invited speakers in favor of those supportive of the George W. Bush administration. Slaughter responded to these claims by pointing to the dozens of public lectures by independent academics, journalists, and other analysts that the Wilson School hosts each academic year. Others noted that, with Bush's Republican Party controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress, many of the most influential people in the federal government, and in the international relations apparatus in particular, were necessarily administration supporters. In 2003 the Woodrow Wilson School hosted an art exhibit titled "Ricanstructions" that opponents of the exhibit claimed was "offensive to Catholics" and desecrated Christian symbols. Slaughter defended the exhibit.
From 2002 to 2004, Slaughter served as president of the American Society of International Law. She was also one of the early members on the Centre for International Governance Innovation international board of directors.

Career at the State Department

On 23 January 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the appointment of Slaughter as the new Director of Policy Planning under the Obama administration. Slaughter was the first woman to hold this position.
At the State Department, Slaughter was chief architect of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review whose first iteration was released in December 2010. The QDDR provided a blueprint for elevating development as a pillar of American foreign policy and leading through civilian power. Commenting upon the skepticism that often greets such reports, and reiterating Secretary Clinton's strong desire that the QDDR become an essential part of the State Department policy process, Slaughter said: "I'm pretty sure you're thinking, 'I've heard this before,' But this is different." Slaughter received the Secretary's Distinguished Service Award for exceptional leadership and professional competence, the highest honor conferred by the State Department. She also received a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Agency for International Development for her outstanding contribution to development policy.
In February 2011, at the conclusion of her two-year public service leave, Slaughter returned to Princeton University. She remains a consultant for the State Department and sits on the Secretary of State's Foreign Policy Advisory Board. She has written that she came "home not only because of Princeton's rules, but also because of my desire to be with my family and my conclusion that juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible."
A 2015 article in Marie Claire magazine quoted Hillary Clinton as saying that "other women don't break a sweat" and choose to stay working in stressful government jobs. Since the article discussed Anne-Marie Slaughter in the same paragraph, Slaughter mentioned that she was "devastated" by the idea that Clinton had been referring to her specifically. After hearing confirmation from Clinton that the quotation was taken out of context, Slaughter stated that the two women were still on good terms.

Other policy, public, and corporate activities

In the 1980s, as a student, Slaughter was part of the team headed by Professor Abram Chayes that helped the Sandinista government of Nicaragua bring suit against the United States in the International Court of Justice for violations of international law, in the case Nicaragua v. United States.
Since leaving the State Department, Slaughter remains a frequent commentator on foreign policy issues by publishing op-eds in major newspapers, magazines and blogs and curating foreign policy news on Twitter. She appears regularly on CNN, BBC, NPR, and PBS and lectures to academic, civic, and corporate audiences. She has written a regular opinion column for Project Syndicate since January 2012. She delivers more than 60 public lectures annually. Foreign Policy magazine named her to their annual list of the Top100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
She has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations, including the Council of Foreign Relations, the New America Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Security Network and the Brookings Doha Center. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the , , and the bipartisan Development Council of the . In 2006, she chaired the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion. From 2004–2007, she was a co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security.
In the private sector, she is currently on the corporate board of Abt Associates, a for-profit government contractor involved in research, evaluation and implementing programs in the fields of health, social and environmental policy, and international development. She was previously on the board of the McDonald's Corporation and that of the Citigroup Economic and Political Strategies Advisory Group.
In 2013, Slaughter was named president and CEO of the New America Foundation, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C. dedicated to renewing America in the Digital Age. Their "Better Life Lab" key projects and initiatives include Family Policy and Caregiving, Redesigning Work and Gender Equality, a topic Slaughter has been outspoken about in several of her writings.

On the responsibility to protect

In July 2005, Slaughter wrote in the American Journal of International Law about the responsibility to protect that:
In her 2006 Levine lecture at Fordham University, Slaughter called the R2P "the most important shift in our conception of sovereignty since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648," and founded it in the Four Freedoms speech by President Roosevelt. She referred to a speech by Kofi Annan, in which he saw that the United Nations had come to a "fork in the road" and in her words "that it was time to decide how to adapt the institution to not the world of 1945 but the world of 2005".

On Libyan intervention

and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, on the situation in Libya, were adopted on 26 February and 17 March 2011, respectively. Resolution 1970 was the first case where the Security Council authorized a military intervention citing the R2P; it passed unanimously. One week after the adoption with many absentions of the latter Resolution, Slaughter wrote a strong endorsement of Western military intervention in Libya.
In this op-ed, Slaughter challenged the skeptics who questioned the NATO use of force in Libya, describing a lack of NATO as an invitation for other regional regimes to increase their repression to remain in power. She challenged the idea that value-based and interest-based arguments on intervention could be distinguished and noted the role of President Barack Obama in helping to form an international coalition, which increased the pressure on Muammar Gadhafi. She is supportive of the Libyan Transitional National Council draft constitutional charter and is relieved that comparisons with Iraq are being made, because it might prevent similar mistakes in Libya.
On 25 August 2011, she was roundly criticized by Matt Welch, who sorted through many of Slaughter's prior op-eds and concluded that she was a "situational constitutionalist".
Clifford May on 15 October 2014 wrote a piece in which he drew a straight line between Annan and Slaughter's R2P "norm", and the failure in Libya. May noted that President Obama had cited the R2P norm as his primary justification for using military force with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who had threatened to attack the opposition stronghold of Benghazi.
On 26 February 2015, Forbes magazine published a piece by Doug Bandow which called for Washington policymakers to be held accountable for another war gone bad. Slaughter was singled out for criticism, for her statement that "it clearly can be in the U.S. and the West’s strategic interest to help social revolutions fighting for the values we espouse and proclaim.":

On Syrian intervention

In a February 2012 op-ed for The New York Times, Slaughter wrote proposing the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad by means of civil disobedience:
She proposed that actors such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, "arm the opposition soldiers with anti-tank, countersniper and portable antiaircraft weapons" in order to help the Friends of Syria group intervene. Journalist Michael Hirsh was quick to support her in the National Journal, writing that "even if the U.N. Security Council remains paralyzed, the newly empowered Arab League can provide a cover of legitimacy."
On 8 June 2012, Slaughter returned to the subject of intervention in Syria, with a rebuttal of a Henry Kissinger piece, in which he argued that an intervention would imperil the foundation of world order. Citing two situation reports and claiming that NATO had violated UNSC 1970 in Libya, Slaughter imagined an intervention process without widespread destruction:
Slaughter sought to provide arms to the rebels, calling for bold action in creating a western backed coalition that would provide heavy weapons to rebels that controlled safe zones which admitted foreign journalists to monitor the rebels' actions. She imagined that "this type of action would force the Russian and Chinese governments to come clean about the real motives for their positions," and proceeded to charge Vladimir Putin with "crimes against humanity, indeed near-genocide... in Chechnya at the turn of the century". Slaughter admitted that the principle of sovereignty was "enshrined in the United Nations Charter," but pointed to the fact that in 2005, the doctrine of R2P had been adopted by the UN.

On how gender impacts work-family balance

Slaughter's article titled "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic. In the first four days after publication, the piece attracted 725,000 unique readers, making it the most popular article ever published in that magazine. In the same period, it received over 119,000 Facebook "Recommends," making it by far the most "liked" piece ever to appear in any version of the magazine. Within several days, it had been discussed in detail on the front page of The New York Times and in many other media outlets, attracting attention from around the world. Although Slaughter originally tried to call the article "Why Women Can't Have it All Yet," she has since stated that it was a mistake to use the phrase "Have it All" in general. In 2015, Slaughter clarified that she hoped to stimulate a discussion about a wide range of working mothers, not only those in prestigious or lucrative careers.
The article in The Atlantic became the basis of the 2015 book . The book argues that a number of challenges remain for the women's movement in the US. It allows her to expands on her position in the article and respond to her critics. In Unfinished Business, she attempts to create a framework to understand the problems faced by all working parents, not just women. She also discusses US public policy and declares that without paid maternity leave, affordable childcare, the right to part-time work, job security for pregnant employees and better enforcement of discriminatory laws both men and women will continue to suffer. Slaughter urges a focus on the value of work being done, not on the traditional gender roles. She states that western notions of masculinity should be challenged before women imprison men to the crippling gender roles women have been fighting to escape from. Slaughter believes that men and women must acknowledge the damaging social system in place hindering their ability to make money while simultaneously caring for their families. When this system is realized they must work together to push the boundaries of traditional gender roles and create an impactful, positive change. Ultimately, Slaughter calls for a change in the workplace policies which affect both men and women. She argues that embracing a parental role, instead of a gendered one is crucial for the success of future families. One step toward gender equity that it advocates is empowering men to re-envision their lives and embrace the roles of engaged fathers, sons and caregivers.

President and CEO of New America

Slaughter was named President and CEO of the think-tank New America in 2013. In 2017, The New York Times alleged that Slaughter had closed the Open Markets research group and dismissed its director Barry Lynn because he had criticized Google, a major donor of New America, and called for it to be broken up. Slaughter denied that Open Markets was closed because of pressure from Google and said Lynn was dismissed because he had "repeatedly violated the standards of honesty and good faith with his colleagues." New America co-chair Jonathan Soros wrote in a letter that Google had neither "attempted to interfere" nor "threaten funding" over Open Markets research critical of monopolies. In a letter to New America's board and leadership, 25 former and current New America fellows said that although they had "never experienced any efforts by donors or managers at New America to influence work," they "were troubled by the initial lack of transparency and communication from New America's leadership" and "remained deeply concerned about this sequence of events".

Selected publications