Holy Crap! President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

category: Government and Social Entrepreneurship

Published October 09, 2009 @ 12:50PM PT

In a stunning announcement this morning, President Barack Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. The response has been fast, loud, and all over the place. So what are we supposed to think?

It's clear that people - even those that really like President Obama - have mixed feelings. A Huffington Post poll asking people what they thought was relatively evenly split between him deserving the prize, not being sure if he deserved the prize, and thinking it was just too early. Watching Twitter and Facebook this morning, the volley of messages about the award has been huge.

One of the most frequent themes is the notion of intentions vs. results. A common snarky joke I've seen is "Hey, I'm trying to change the world too; can I be considered next year?" One of my former students at Northwestern University wrote "This is reminding me of my Ivan Illch - "To Hell With Good Intentions!""

One of the interesting things is that while we tend to think of the Nobel Prize as this beacon of recognized achievement, it is - like all awards - a subjective and political award that is not just reactive but proactive. Indeed, President Obama acknowledged as much when he said that: "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations...throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement, it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes."

Some of the smartest commentary I've seen has pointed out that the Nobel Prize is not always an award for accomplishment. Just Foreign Policy executive director Robert Naiman points out that Desmond Tutu was awarded the prize in 1984, a full ten years before Apartheid officially ended, in large part to add the heft of the international community to his cause.

What should social entrepreneurs think about the award? It's important to look at the context and pattern of the laureates for the last two decades. It's only been quite recently that the notion of "peace" has expanded beyond very traditional actors in positions of political power to influence conflict resolution. Muhammad Yunus and Wangaari Maathai are probably the two best known social innovators to win the award, which I view as an expansion of the notion of "peace" to include the root causes of conflict - poverty, resource scarcity etc.

Mostly what I think is that this award is an affirmation of the common sense middle space that Obama occupied during the election and seems to embody for so many around the world. Robert Fuller, the former president of Oberlin College, labeled it "dignitarian politics" in which people want dignity more than anything else. For him, dignity means the ability to pursue a life unmolested.

A lack of dignity is at the core of the disempowerment that has sometimes been the byproduct of well-intentioned aid and philanthropy. A lack of dignity is the feeling that people have when they've been kicked down by the world and feel as though they're no longer in control of their ability to shape their future. There is little as crippling as a lack of dignity.

If President Obama, by example and deed, can usher a new era that places human dignity at the center of the political, social, and economic calculus, then this will have been a brilliant selection. If he can't, I hope he goes down trying.

(Photo: Huffington Post)

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Comments (10)

Back for one last comment. Obama is your representative, Americans voted him in, wisely I believe. Think of it as an American people's Nobel Peace Prize and OWN IT. Once you own it, you can act on it.

Women are under-represented in these nominations, so what did we do? We OWNED IT and started our own Peace Prize stream. Look up "1000 Women for Peace" on Google.

Posted by Oceania OZ on 10/09/2009 @ 02:48PM PT
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Congratulations to our President. We'll enjoy the win too.

Posted by Barbara Kantola on 10/09/2009 @ 03:18PM PT
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I am glad he won this. After remaining calm and rational amidst a bombardment of tantruming children, obstructionists, bigots, and dangerous extremists, he deserves more awards! Rev. Bookburn - Radio Volta

Posted by Rev Bookburn on 10/09/2009 @ 05:46PM PT
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I agree, Rev., he definitely "earned" this award with all he's had to put up with and trying to get our status with the rest of the world raised. And yes, we voted him to be our President.

Posted by Barbara Kantola on 10/09/2009 @ 06:23PM PT
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although its early to get the prize but it shows that he started well. and he took some good steps others failed to take in bring peace with other nations

Posted by faith ounha on 10/10/2009 @ 06:04AM PT
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With all due respect to our Presidet don't believe that our President has earned the Nobel Peace Prize like Ghandi or the Dali Lhama or Mother Teresa. What has he done? I have never heard of him until he ran for President.

Posted by Janet Elizabeth Geren on 10/11/2009 @ 08:42AM PT
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If you are on the left (hell, no matter what your political affiliation) please do not let your intellectual bias, your elitist rational mind, stand in the way of supporting our president. Pres. Obama won this award because there is no other human on the planet with more potential to bring some peace to a very, very troubled and volitile world. there is no other logical lens through which to view this.

In general, the liberal support of this president has always been tempered and qualified by personal posturing, "I support him, but I don't like his position here or there..." I have done it and I am working hard to curb my liberal-elitest mind to stand behind this brilliant politician with both of my feet.

The equation for me is, if I want peace, this is the man with the best chance to bring it. My quibiling about the calculous of the award is damaging to his potential. This is not blind support so please let that go. This is a calculated response to a very ugly political environment.

As Pres. Jimmy Carter said, much of the bile directed at Pres. Obama is racist. I honor Pres. Carter's continued courage. And, as is his way, Pres. Clinton almost supported him.

The global opportunity here is huge. We must fight our Diane-Feinsteinian reflexes to think our individual distinction is relevant. The reality is that distinguishing ourselves as individuals in this context is counter productive. Again, if you hate racisim, if you want real progress towards peace, check your ego at the door and get behind our president. Blog about it. Tell your friends. Evangelize your support. Be smart, be intelleactual, make an empirical argument for your unequivical support. This can't be hard for only him.

Posted by Steve Wright on 10/11/2009 @ 09:50AM PT
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I think that if given the chance, when he finishes cleaning up the mess from the last administration, that President Obama will go down in history as one of our greatest Presidents. It is very small of some people to be dogging him for the most minute, trivial things, just because they want him to fail. If he fails, so do we, the Country and our government. He has already restored our standing to #1 in the World. That is a great accomplishment, considering how low our standing was before he went to work at improving it and making us matter to the world again. He has my greatest thanks and admiration for all he has been able to do under insurmountable odds and nastiness he has had to endure to take care of his citizens.

Posted by Barbara Kantola on 10/11/2009 @ 10:32AM PT
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The news and views over the SNL Obama accomplishments has been sweeping the web ever since the most recent episode aired on NBC last weekend. It seems that SNL doesn't think that he's done nearly as much as he said he would either. It's on the political blogs, and it has the more militant of his supporters in an uproar. Still, it was meant to be a parody, and neither right nor left seem to accept that satire and parody is a 3,000 year old tradition, which they would if they had what's called "intelligence." The clips of the SNL Obama accomplishments are all over the web, so you won't need to find the best payday loans rates to see it.

Posted by xavier jhihhih on 10/14/2009 @ 10:17PM PT
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Not many Presidents have gotten as much accomplished in the first year of office as this one has done. And this one had to start way back, to clean up a huge catastrophic mess left to him from the previous administration. Give him a chance, no one can solve all the problems he has had to repair and then try to do the things he wants to get done at the same time. Be patient, we can't act like a bunch of bratty kids wanting everything done for us this minute.

Posted by Barbara Kantola on 10/15/2009 @ 05:33AM PT
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Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.