Policy Expert Profile: Anne-Marie Slaughter

On September 21st, UVA hosted the 5th annual Shadwell Speaker Series, presented by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation and the Shadwell Society. This year’s featured speaker was foreign policy expert Anne-Marie Slaughter.  

Described as “an innovative and prolific scholar” by Foreign Policy and named one of the magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers four years in a row, Anne-Marie Slaughter is a Princeton University political scientist, a former top official at the U.S. State Department, and a monthly columnist for The Financial Times.

In her work, Dr. Slaughter confronts a range of topics — from geopolitics and global challenges to gender equality and leadership — all with a unique and powerful voice—one that transcends some of the most difficult policy areas today.

Slaughter gained national attention for her article, Why Women Still Can’t Have it All, published in The Atlantic in 2012. The article, which started a firestorm of debate, and later led to a book, Unfinished Business explored the challenges women face in the workplace and home and how the mantra of having it all is a feminist fiction. After scoring her dream job as the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, Slaughter later left the job because her son was getting into trouble back home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Her article in The Atlantic, while controversial, widened the debate about women—ambitious, accomplished, women—and the barriers they still face when it comes to work-life balance. With the book, she attempted to give voice to also the working-class and social groups that she had not considered before. And this is the where her book takes off, allowing Slaughter to show how the American workplace fails to support all women—regardless of class, race, or education. This is her strength both as a writer and a policy expert—the ability to zero in on the so-called blind spots—whether it’s about what leaning in leaves out or the current state of world politics—and somehow bring clarity to those blind areas in a nuanced and thoughtful way.

It came as no surprise that her lecture on the current geopolitical landscape was aptly titled, “Hotspots and Blind spots.”

For Slaughter, the rapidly changing and interconnected world requires a new outlook for policymaking. Political leaders and diplomats have long viewed the world as a game of strategy, a chessboard where anticipating and countering the moves of other players is the key to success. This is no longer the best strategy she argues, warning that if leaders continue to rely on old models, we are likely to miss rich opportunities for growth and prosperity. Keeping in mind Thomas Jefferson’s universalist view of the world, Slaughter managed to bring together a range of hotspot issues from Russian aggression against Ukraine (a much-maligned issue) to the looming threat of North Korea to climate change’s impact on Middle Eastern politics. Slaughter argued that there was more than meets the eye in these areas—hotspot or not.

For example, take the effect of climate change in the Middle East. As Yemen’s war continues, it has also suffered a horrendous drought and will be the first country to completely run out of water—ever. Resources, the Achilles heel of the Middle East, will continue to shape policy in a region of the world that has largely only known conflict.

She went on to invite the audience to visualize the world without state lines as if viewing it from outer space, where borders no longer exist and instead, are replaced by the vast networks that continue to expand and grow at alarming speed—some more than others. This is a new reality argues Slaughter and one where states are no longer the only players in today’s international milieu.

Take the aftermath of 2011 Russian election, where the educated elites gathered in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square (Red Square) in protest. This was the largest political event of its kind to take place in Russia in the last 20 years. During this time, these protesters were in constant contact with Russians protesting in Petersburg as well as Ukrainians—all united in their defiance against Russian state aggression.

For Slaughter, while statecraft is for governments, web craft, the art of building specific networks to address specific problems, is for everyone—citizens, civic groups, military strategists, and business executives as well as foreign policy partners.

You can watch the talk here.

Garrett Hall at Sunset

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