Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist, and public commentator. From 2002 to 2009, she was the Dean of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs. Slaughter was 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 (formerly the New America Foundation).

Slaughter has received several awards for her work, including 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.

As author and editor, Slaughter has worked on eight books, including A New World Order (2004); The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World (2007); Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family (2015); The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Dangerous World (2017), as well as many 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." Slaughter is on the Global Advisory Board for Oxford University's journal "Global Summitry: Politics, Economics, and Law in International Governance."

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 the 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,' [a big plan to change the way a government agency works] 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, Slaughter returned to Princeton University at the conclusion of her two-year public service leave. 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 (after two years of leave, you lose your tenure) 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.

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[ed] 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 [their] 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."