Anne-Marie Slaughter is a Democratic foreign policy scholar and the president of New America, a left-of-center think tank. Slaughter is the former director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D).

Slaughter has advocated for hawkish foreign policy positions, including American interventions in Iraq and Syria. She was especially critical of President Donald Trump for supposedly diminishing America’s foreign presence.

Early Career

In the 1980s, Anne-Marie Slaughter was on a team led by scholar Abram Chayes that helped the Communist-aligned Sandinistas sue the United States in the International Court of Justice for supporting the Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war. ^[1]

From 1990 to 1993, Anne-Marie Slaughter worked as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. During her last year, she attained tenure. ^[2] From 1994 to 2002, Slaughter worked as a professor of international, foreign, and comparative law at Harvard Law School. In 2003, she became a professor of politics and international affairs at her alma mater, Princeton University. In 2013, she became a professor emeritus and has remained one ever since. ^{[3] [4]}

U.S. State Department

From 2009 to 2011, Anne-Marie Slaughter took a leave of absence from Princeton University to serve as the first female director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State in the Obama administration under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After leaving, Slaughter remained a consultant for the department. ^{[5] [6]}

Slaughter launched the department’s first “Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review,” which provides a broad overview of the United States’ global diplomatic priorities every four years. ^[7]

“Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”

After leaving the State Department, Slaughter wrote an op-ed in the Atlantic entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Slaughter described the difficulty of being a mother while working in a high-stress environment and lamented that not enough support is given to mothers in modern workplaces. She stated that she left the department to focus on her two children and claimed that while mothers can have successful careers, they tend to either be extraordinarily competent or wealthy. Soon after, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed disapproval at the article, stating “I can’t stand whining.” Later, Clinton clarified that she wasn’t accusing Slaughter of “whining.” ^[8]

“Why Women Can’t Have It All” became the Atlantic’s most popular article. Slaughter eventually developed the piece into a TED Talk. ^[9]

New America

In 2013, Slaughter became the president and CEO of New America, a left-of-center public policy think tank. ^[10]

In September 2017, New America let go of scholar Barry Lynn and closed his research group, Open Markets. Slaughter and New America faced public backlash over accusations that the firing had been instigated by Google, a major funder of New America, after Open Markets advocated implementing stricter anti-trust regulation of the tech giant. Slaughter denied any influence from Google and claimed Lynn had been let go for repeatedly violating “strong implicit norms” regarding notifying New America’s leadership before publishing articles which “could have an impact on the funding.” Open Markets was eventually spun-off as an independent non-profit, Citizens Against Monopoly. ^[11] Slaughter later wrote that she feared the incident would end her career. ^[12]

Foreign Policy Views

In her book Chessboard and the Web, Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that globalism has lessened the importance of sovereign nation-states and elevated international “networks” of individuals including corporations, non-governmental organizations, and ideological associations. Given that these networks don’t have coercive power, Slaughter hopes that international relations will steadily move toward a more cooperative paradigm than past geopolitical eras. ^[13]

In 2003, Slaughter wrote an op-ed in the New York Times supporting a United States strategy of circumventing the United Nations to commence an invasion of Iraq. ^[14] In 2013, she wrote, “I now see the decision to invade Iraq as cynical, tragic, immoral, and irresponsible to the point of folly,” but “only time can tell” whether the invasion will ultimately be beneficial to Iraq. ^[15]

Slaughter supported the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya targeting the government of Muammar Gaddafi on both moral and geopolitical grounds. ^[16]

In 2014, Slaughter advocated countering Russia’s invasion of the Ukrainian region of Crimea by intervening in the Syrian civil war against dictator and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad. ^[17] On April 7, 2017, Slaughter Tweeted “Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!! After years of useless handwringing in the face of hideous atrocities,” in response to Trump launching a bombing operation at the Shayrat Airbase in Syria. ^[18]

In 2022, Slaughter called for an international ban on nuclear weapons. In a Project Syndicate article, Slaughter argued that while nuclear weapons may deter wars between nuclear powers, recent history has demonstrated that they increase the likelihood of war between nuclear states and non-nuclear states, such as the American invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ^[19]

Also in 2022, Slaughter opposed the expansion of NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In accordance with her theory of “networks,” Slaughter advocated for a de-escalation of geopolitical entrenchment in favor of using non-state networks to reconcile the East-West geopolitical divide. ^[20]

Other Political Advocacy

In addition to her Atlantic article, “Why Women Can’t Have It All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter has written extensively on modern women’s issues, including the work-life balance, men taking a greater role in housework, and how foreign policy decision-making could be improved by having more female diplomats. ^[21]

Slaughter blamed the defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election on sexism, both explicitly and implicitly held by American voters. ^[22]

Slaughter advocates for expanding the provision of government services, such as paying taxes and voting, through digital platforms on the model of Estonia. ^[23]

In an interview, Slaughter said that if she could implement a single policy, she would create universal government-provided daycare. ^[24]

Slaughter supported the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and praised its non-binding status for providing flexibility in its implementation. ^[25] After President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Accord, Slaughter noted that numerous companies, charities, and associations made commitments to the Accord as a demonstration of her “network” theory of foreign policy. ^[26]

President Donald Trump

Slaughter has said the greatest beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s presidency were “the bullies, the haters, the trolls, the sexists, the racists, and everyone who wants to smash and destroy, rather than build.” ^[27]

Slaughter was critical of Trump’s foreign policy which, with the exception of bombings in Syria, she called too isolationist and blamed for relinquishing geopolitical power to foreign powers. Slaughter also condemned Trump for establishing friendly diplomatic relations with numerous authoritarians, including Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s Vladmir Putin. ^[28]

Slaughter supported Trump’s condemnation of the treatment of Uyghurs in China but asserted that Trump did not apply enough pressure on the Chinese government to force meaningful action. ^[29]

Reparations

Slaughter argued that some form of reparations should be paid to Black Americans after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations.” Slaughter is descended from multiple slave owners and a Confederate general, and has said, “I cannot deny or change what they did; nor can I simply condemn their action as an artifact of the time for which I have no responsibility.” ^[30]