Not so Noble: How the Nobel Prize has become the most controversial award ever

It’s that time of year again – a week of Nobel Prize announcements begin today.

The lucky winners will get a cash award on 10 December of nearly $900,000 from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

That this comes just a day after the United Nations and advocacy groups for survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging Pope Francis to authorise into a Nobel Prize-winning bishop is unfortunate timing.

But then again, even a cursory look at the history of the Nobel Prize shows why it isn’t so noble and hasn’t been since its inception in 1901.

Let’s take a closer look:

The origins

As per NobelPrize.org, Alfred Nobel’s will, making known the announcement of five Nobel prizes from his massive estate after his death in 1986, created quite a stir.

He wrote that the prize should be given by a committee of five persons chosen by the Norwegian Parliament “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

That declaration came after Nobel spent his life and career intimately linked with death and destruction.

Nobel was known for inventing dynamite and other more powerful explosives, creations that were “useful to the art of making war,” as NobelPrize.org states.

So why did the change of heart?

According to LiveScience, Nobel was influenced by an obituary printed in a newspaper – his own.

In 1888, after the death of his brother Ludvig, a French outlet mistakenly printed Nobel’s obituary. In it, he was described at ‘the merchant of death’ who ‘became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.’

That seemed to shake up Nobel and made him want to change his legacy.

Nobel was reportedly stunned by what he read, and as a result became determined to do something to improve his legacy. One year before he died in 1896, Nobel signed his last will and testament, which set aside the majority of his vast estate to establish the five Nobel Prizes, including one awarded for the pursuit of peace.

While some have cast doubt on this tale, Annika Pontikis, public relations manager for the Nobel Foundation, confirmed it as at least partly true to Legacy.com.

“Yes, Nobel saw his obituary in advance. And yes, he was unhappy about what he read. Still, it was probably not the only factor that influenced him to create a peace prize,” Pontikis told the website.

.But even the obituary wasn’t enough to stop Nobel’s work.

Author Sven Tagil, writing on Nobelprize.org said Nobel spent the last decade of his life engaging in “the development and exploitation of different weapons technology inventions, for instance rockets, cannons and progressive powder,” Tagil wrote.

Gandhi misses out

Mahatma Gandhi is undoubtedly the most high-profile case of a deserving individual missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1937, 1938, 1939,1947 and in 1948 again, a few days before he was murdered in January of that year.

Though members of the Nobel committee have publicly lamented Gandhi missing out, an article from the Nobel Foundation written by Nobelprize.org peace editor Øyvind Tønnesson attempted to explain that Gandhi at least partly missed out on the grounds that he was too “nationalistic” or “patriotic” to be given the beacon of peace award for the world.

Gandhi was very different from earlier laureates, the piece claimed.

“He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of laureates,” the piece stated.

“There is no hint in the archives that the Norwegian Nobel Committee ever took into consideration the possibility of an adverse British reaction to an award to Gandhi. Thus, it seems that the hypothesis that the Committee’s omission of Gandhi was due to its members’ not wanting to provoke British authorities, may be rejected,” it added.

In 1948, the consideration was that no one had ever been awarded the Peace Prize posthumously – though under circumstances it was technically possible.

“Thus it was possible to give Gandhi the prize. However, Gandhi did not belong to an organisation, he left no property behind and no will; who should receive the Prize money? The Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, August Schou, asked another of the Committee’s advisers, lawyer Ole Torleif Røed, to consider the practical consequences if the Committee were to award the Prize posthumously. Røed suggested a number of possible solutions for general application. Subsequently, he asked the Swedish prize-awarding institutions for their opinion.”

The committee decided that posthumous awards should not be made unless the laureate died after the decision was rendered.

“On November 18, 1948, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that “there was no suitable living candidate”. Chairman Gunnar Jahn wrote in his diary: “To me, it seems beyond doubt that a posthumous award would be contrary to the intentions of the testator.”

According to the chairman, three of his colleagues agreed in the end, only Mr Oftedal was in favour of a posthumous award to Gandhi.

“We know little about the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s discussions on Gandhi’s candidature in 1948 other than the above-quoted entry of 18 November in Gunnar Jahn’s diary but it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award. When the committee, for formal reasons, ended up not making such an award, they decided to reserve the prize, and then, one year later, not to spend the prize money for 1948 at all. What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi’s place on the list of laureates was silently but respectfully left open.”

When the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi”, as per the article.

One could argue that this is ‘too little too late’ and not nearly enough to recognise the life and works of Gandhi.

Absurdly given to Obama

Even the greatest proponents of Barack Obama would admit this was a blunder.

In 2009, Obama, in a stunning decision that shocked Nobel observers, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The dubious logic behind the decision?  To encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

Obama became just the third sitting US president to win the award – after legendary presidents Theodore Roosevelt (in 1906) and Woodrow Wilson (in 1919).

The Norwegian Nobel Committee at the time claimed it was trying “to promote what he stands for and the positive processes that have started now.

“He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate,” then Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. “Some people say, and I understand it, isn’t it premature? Too early? Well, I’d say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us.”

The former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee admitted in 2015 that award failed to live up to the panel’s expectations.

“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” Lundestad wrote in a book. “In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.”

It is rare for Nobel officials to discuss the proceedings of the secretive committee or publicly criticise each other.

Lundestad, who stepped down last year after 25 years as the non-voting secretary of the secretive committee, noted that Obama was startled by the award and that his staff even investigated whether other winners had skipped the prize ceremony in Oslo.

“In the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo,” Lundestad wrote.

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo

On Sunday, the UN and clergy sexual abuse advocacy groups called on Pope Francis to investigate Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered independence hero of East Timor.

Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with fellow East Timorese independence icon Jose Ramos-Horta for campaigning for a fair and peaceful solution to conflict in their home country as it struggled to gain independence from Indonesia.

He is revered in East Timor and was celebrated abroad for his bravery in calling out human rights abuses by Indonesian rulers despite threats against his life.

Belo abruptly retired six years after winning the prize.

The Vatican’s sex abuse office said last week that it had secretly sanctioned Belo in 2020, forbidding him from having contact with minors or with East Timor, based on misconduct allegations that arrived in Rome in 2019.

That was the year Francis approved a new church law that required all cases of predator prelates to be reported in-house and established a mechanism to investigate bishops, who had long escaped accountability for abuse or cover-up during the church’s decades-long scandal.

But a brief statement by the Vatican, issued after Dutch magazine De Groen Amsterdammer exposed the Belo scandal by quoting two of his alleged victims, didn’t reveal what church officials might have known before 2019.

This latest instance is yet another shadow on the Nobel Prize and the legacy of Nobel himself.

Winners are no prize themselves

Besides, the winners aren’t exactly a prize themselves.

As Lawrence K Altman, a doctor and writer for The New York Times, quoted Nobel laureate Dr Michael S Brown of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas as saying in 2006, “Nobel winners are selected for their discoveries, not their IQs, and most are not geniuses.”

Brown, remembering when laureates met in Stockholm to celebrate the centennial of the Nobel Prizes, recalled: “If you really want to know what Nobel Prize winners are like, you should have been in the breakfast line seeing all these brilliant people wandering around randomly trying to find the scrambled eggs. It was like anything but a group of brilliant folks.”

With inputs from agencies

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