Published: October 18, 2009 11:26 pm      

Nobel prize: Peace, human progress

Famous first lines from “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasion, Meditation XVII,” John Donne noted: “Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me…” When President Barack Obama was informed that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, he responded this way: “Let me make it clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of the aspirations held by people in all nations.”

His predecessors, like him, were learned men and women. When viewed within the context of changing global attitudes toward the United States and its allies, the decision of the Nobel Prize committee may be more closely aligned with the issuance of a bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment to peace and harmony in international relations, says former President Jimmy Carter.

Among the president’s predecessors were the world’s greatest men of honor, including several outstanding African-Americans. President Obama is the third U.S. citizen of African descent to receive the prize.

Lisa Crooms (The Root, 2009) wrote: “It’s relevant because the challenges the American people have entrusted you to address link you to Dr. Ralph Bunche and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama is also linked to recipients associated with the highest office in the land – President Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter – after leaving office. He was the first person of color to win the award, received the 1950 prize for his efforts to negotiate an Arab-Israeli armistice. King, the second African-American laureate and the youngest, received his peace prize for his nonviolent assault on the injustices of Jim Crow (Crooms, 10-11-2009). Each represented a dimension of human rights and efforts to create “a new climate in international politics.” It was this latter dimension that encapsulates the philosophical stance and actions, to date, of President Barack Obama.

Ralph J. Bunche was born in 1904 in Detroit, Mich. His father, Fred Bunche, was a barber in a shop having a clientele of whites only; his mother, Olive (Johnson) Bunche, was an amateur musician; his grandmother, Nana Johnson, had been born into slavery. At the age of 10, his family moved to Albuquerque, N.M., in the hope that the poor health of his parents would improve in the dry climate.

Both died two years after the move. Ralph and his sisters moved to Los Angeles to live with their grandmother. Ralph contributed to the family finances by selling newspapers, serving as a house boy for a movie actor, and doing odd jobs.

His intellectual brilliance appeared early. He was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles where he had been a debater and all-around athlete. With a scholarship granted by Harvard University and $1,000 raised by the black community of Los Angeles, Bunche began his studies in political science. He received his master’s degree in 1928 from Howard University; his doctorate at Harvard. He completed his dissertation comparing French rule in Togo land and Dahomey.

From 1947-49, Bunche worked on the most important assignment of his career – the confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. In 1948, Bunche was named UN mediator on Palestine.

After 11 months of virtually ceaseless negotiating, Bunche obtained signature on armistice agreement between Israel and the Arab States.

When he returned home to a hero’s welcome, he was besieged with requests to lecture, was awarded the Spingarn Prize by the NAACP in 1949, and received over 30 honorary degrees and the Nobel Peace Prize for 1950.

When war erupted in the Congo in 1960, Dag Hammarskjöld, then secretary-general of the UN, appointed him special representative to oversee UN commitments there.

President Theodore Roosevelt, having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-05, resolved a dispute with Mexico by resorting to arbitration as recommended by the peace movement.

Roosevelt was the first statesman to be awarded the Peace Prize, and for the first time the award was controversial. The Norwegian Left argued that Roosevelt was a “military mad” imperialist.

Swedish newspapers wrote that Alfred Nobel was turning in his grave, and that Norway awarded the Peace Prize to Roosevelt in order to win powerful friends after the dramatic dissolution of the union with Sweden.

Roosevelt was described as a radical in the Republican Party. President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920 in recognition of his 14-points peace program and inserting the Covenant of the League of Nations in the 1919 Treaty Versailles.

Commenting on the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2009, Gov. Tim Kaine, D-VA, advises: “The Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Peace Prize to President Obama is an affirmation of the fact that the United States has returned to its long-standing role as a world leader.”

Former Sen. Sam Nunn advised: “He has changed the tone of U. S. foreign policy by making it clear to the world that we are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and he has reshaped the global focus and debate.”

Nancy Gibbs of Time (10-9-09) commented: “Inspirational words have brought him a long way – including that night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that “we join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick…”

The president emphasizes unity, as expressed by Donne (1839): “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls thee.”





Naomi W. Ledé is a retired Senior Research Scientist, Distinguished Professor, and University Administrator. She is Chair of the Board of the Samuel Walker Houston Museum and Cultural Center in Huntsville, Texas.