Samantha Power works at Harvard, and writes about U.S. foreign policy, especially as it concerns war and genocide.  Her talk on TED.com is remarkable for two reasons. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/samantha_power_on_a_complicated_hero.html)

First, she discusses, with passion and insight, the issue of U.S and global response to genocide.  She gives us all a grade, as befits a part-time academic, and it’s not good:  a ‘C’ at best. 

Second, she manages nearly to scupper her (ultimately successful) talk with one persistent problem with her body language. 

Samantha begins by contrasting our relatively feeble response to genocide in the 20th Century with a somewhat stronger one in the 21st.   She points out that when the genocide began in Rwanda, there were lots of letters to congressmen here in the U. S. worried about the endangered apes, but none about the endangered people.  By contrast, the response to Darfur has been much more visible, if not yet successful.

What’s the difference?  Chiefly the work of an anti-genocide movement of college students, high school students, and evangelicals.  This movement has made it politically impossible for national leaders to ignore what’s going on as they have before. 

Power traces the history of war, destruction and genocide in recent years through the biography of the remarkable Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian who was the UN’s point person wherever human misery was greatest, until he was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq – in part because a war predicated on the connection between Iraq and terrorism had made no plans for dealing with terrorists once the government was overthrown. 

Sergio was a complicated man, one who struggled with the ‘dance with the devil’ he was forced into in these places of terror and human misery around the world.  When he first began his work, in the independence campaigns in the 1970s, he would denounce evil, loudly and clearly, waiving the UN charter under the noses of generals and junta leaders around the world.  As time went on, he began to denounce less and compromise more, in an effort to save more of the hapless populations he was attempting to serve.  And finally, he ended up somewhere in the middle, negotiating with the likes of the Khmer Rouge, but not ignoring their crimes either. 

It’s quite a tale, and Samantha tells it well, except for one quirk:  she talks with her head tipped on one side for virtually the entire 23 minutes.  Why is that a problem?  I call it the ‘Mr. Rogers gesture’ in my work with clients.  What it does is give up authority.  It’s appropriate if you’re asking a 5-year-old who has come running to you crying, ‘where does it hurt?’  But if you’re trying to hold forth on a very serious issue that cuts directly to the heart of our humanity, you can’t give up your authority.  Don’t do it when you’re in front of an audience, as a general rule, except perhaps when you’ve asked the audience for a response.  Even then, stay in charge.  Keep your head on straight.