Slaughter confirms HRC State Department post

When the British Embassy and the Atlantic Council honored Henry Kissinger at an event at the British ambassador’s residence last week, the first hand up in a room of distinguished statesmen and diplomats during the Q&A following the former U.S. secretary of state’s gravelly and faintly optimistic remarks was that of Anne-Marie Slaughter, the charismatic dean of the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

In a moment of anxiety for many seeking top jobs in the Obama administration, Slaughter has seemed refreshingly self-assured, as reports trickled out that she would be the first woman to head the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning, Foggy Bottom’s in-house think tank whose former heads have included deputy secretary of state nominee Jim Steinberg, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. A big-think strategic thinker in an administration whose national security department chiefs tend towards the pragmatic, Slaughter also has a highly praised article in this month’s Foreign Affairs.

So it’s no great surprise that the Princeton newspaper the Daily Princetonian reports that Slaughter has “confirmed in an e-mail to Wilson School students this evening that she will be leaving the Wilson School to serve under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” Slaughter also told students that, “When Senator Clinton offered me a position, I told her that I could only take a limited public service leave and that I would be commuting back and forth to Princeton on weekends,” the paper reports. The Cable has previously reported that Washington foreign-policy hand and former John Edwards advisor Derek Chollet will be the deputy director of the Office of Policy Planning.

You can read Slaughter’s e-mail here.

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