Professor Karen Garner's Book Published

"Gender and Foreign Policy in the Clinton Administration," by Karen Garner, faculty mentor at the Northeast Center, Saratoga Unit, has been published by Lynne Rienner Publishers/First Forum Books. Garner argues that although recent U.S. governmental attention to global women's rights and women's empowerment is often presented as a new phenomenon, in fact, nearly two decades ago the Clinton administration broke many barriers to challenge women's unequal status vis-a-vis men around the world and to incorporate its needs into U.S. foreign policy and aid programs. "Gender and Foreign Policy in the Clinton Administration" documents the emergence, evolution and legacy of U.S. global gender policy beginning in the 1970s and throughout the 1990s.

The book draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews that Garner conducted with women who served in the Clinton administration State Department and White House. Although she did not have an opportunity to interview former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, whose support for global women's empowerment figures into this history, Garner interviewed her chief of staff, Melanne Verveer, among others. Verveer was subsequently appointed ambassador to lead the state department's Office of Global Women's Issues, founded in 1994.

Valerie M. Hudson at Texas A&M University reviewed the manuscript for Lynne Rienner Publishers and wrote that the book is, "an impressive achievement and an enduring contribution...This volume will be seen as the definitive history of the U.S. government's turn toward gender in its 1990's foreign policy."