BY ELLEN GILBERT // PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW WILKINSON
Slaughter’s foreign policy credentials are daunting, but these days a person can’t be blamed if her name calls to mind her recent Atlantic magazine cover story about women and careers. In “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” Slaughter owned up to the fact that family concerns ultimately trumped (for now) a career in Washington, D.C. After two years, the weekend commute between Princeton, where she lives with her husband and two sons, and Washington D.C. (plus a lot of traveling), had taken its toll. More to the point, she was concerned about her then-14-year-old son.
It probably should be noted that the young man in question was simply doing what comes naturally to many 14-year- olds: “skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him.” Although his father, Princeton University Professor of Politics Andrew Moravcsik, was no slouch when it came to taking care of the boys and supporting Slaughter’s career, she began to feel that it was time for her to come home.
Slaughter’s later description of this crisis of conscience and its consequences are the theme of the Atlantic article, written a year after she left Washington, D.C. Its publication drew criticism from many older women who said she was breaking ranks, and admiration from some younger women who lauded her for telling what they perceive to be the truth. The strength of the article’s resonance (both for and against) with women around the world is reflected in the fact that the foreign rights to a follow-up book she is writing have already been sold in Brazil, India, and Japan. Her earlier foreign policy publications include The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-First Century (coauthor, 2008); A Liberal Theory of International Justice (coauthor, 2005); and A New World Order: Government Networks and the Disaggregated State (2004). Slaughter’s Millenial Lectures on “International Law and International Relations Theory” were published by the Hague Academy of International Law, and she writes a regular column for the Financial Times.