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Malala does not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace (please read on)

She doesn’t deserve to be saddled with it. Having shown real courage she does not deserve to be inducted into a club many of whose existing members are so grotesque that the blogger Jim Miller has for years called the Peace prize the “Nobel Reprimand”.

I also worry that seventeen is too young to be made into an icon. Maybe I worry too much. So far her response seemed to display a fortunate combination of groundedness and a pitch-perfect judgement for what to say to the press. I genuinely hope that her response includes quite a lot of calculation, because a person who can work the crowd is more likely than an ingénue to be fitted by temperament to thrive rather than wilt in a life spent on the world stage.

15 comments to Malala does not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace (please read on)

  • Mr Ed

    Alfred Nobel’s will says (per the Institute) that the prizes go to:

    The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part 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.

    Note there is no Nobel Prize for Economics. I fail to see how getting shot by the Taliban qualifies you for a Peace Prize, where’s the fraternity in that? Never mind the other recipient.

    OTOH MRAF Sir Arthur Harris and his men did a lot to reduce a standing Army, by bombing Germany to rubble.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    What she did that got her shot by the Taliban (blogging and talking to the press about girls’ education) does qualify reasonably well as increasing the fraternity between nations, albeit in a rather long term way. Literacy among women does seem to have some effect in making for more peaceful societies, as Steven Pinker argues quite convincingly in The Better Angels of our Nature.

    Although still a child, she was of an age to know that it was dangerous. She was brave. I don’t begrudge her her prize, I just fear that she has been pushed onto a pedestal by the actions of others, both evil and well-meaning.

  • James

    “I also worry that seventeen is too young to be made into an icon.”

    Well, Sir Barrack Obama has the mind and aptitude of a giddy 17 year old, maybe younger, yet he seemed to handle the Nobel Prize without having a head trip over it.

  • Mr Ed

    But Natalie the Taliban brought her to fame by shooting her, and whilst she was and is brave, she appears to be a tool of some of the socialist elements in Pakistan or others elsewhere.

    What Pakistan (like anywhere else) needs is secularism, the rule of law, private property and free trade. i don’t think that she has prescribed that, and she would probably recoil in horror at such a manifesto.

    I don’t begrudge her the Prize, but I don’t see her qualifying under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will. ATEOTD the Nobel Peace Prize is still struggling to recover in the eyes of the Left, after its historic demotion to second fiddle role behind the Lenin Peace Prize, now lost forever with the Soviet Union’s demise.

  • Paul Marks

    Just give another “Peace Prize” to Obama or the E.U. – or to Putin, or the Taliban or ISIS (yes I am being sarcastic).

    Leave this nice girl alone.

    As for the so called Nobel prize for economics – there is a lot of internet chatter that it will go to I.K. this year. I would be astonished if it does – after all he actually knows something about economics (is that not a disqualification for the prize these days?).

  • Henry Crun

    Certainly more deserving than Barack Obama who was awarded the prize just for turning up to work.

  • V

    In all honesty? I think she’s a self-publicist and not actually all that smart. Sure she’s brave and it was for a good cause but listening to her acceptance speech I don’t think all that much is going on up there. Also since she’s come to the UK she’s done nothing but bitch about sexism ie women being scantily clad in music videos and magazines etc. So women should have the chance to be educated but shouldn’t be allowed to choose how they act or what they wear?

  • Cynwulf

    there is a lot of internet chatter that it will go to I.K. this year.

    Is I.K. some sort of economist shorthand for something us mere civilians are not privy to?

    As for this Malala, yeah just another socialist drone who survived getting shot. The enemy of my enemy is often my enemy too. The fact she’s still “proud” to be a muslim and an Afghan means she is simply not worth listening to and I’ve amused myself enraging a few people by declining to engage in the expected ritual praise.

  • Michael Jennings (London)

    The best suggestion I heard with respect to the Nobel Peace Prize this year is that it should have not been awarded, as it really hasn’t been a good year for peace.

  • Is I.K. some sort of economist shorthand for something us mere civilians are not privy to?

    I’ve found it best not to interrupt Paul Marks while he’s ranting. 🙂

  • I’ve found it best not to interrupt Paul Marks while he’s ranting.

    Indeed. I too have found that those two minutes of my life and the lives of others are better spent googling ‘2014 nobel economics’. But OTOH, I do realize that it is much more interesting to poke fun at someone else’s imperfect memory and shortage of free time.

  • Rich Rostrom

    A lot of Nobel Peace laureates have been fakes, poseurs, and dupes: Linus Pauling, Woodrow Wilson, Rigoberta Menchu, Carter, Gore, Obama, the Pugwash Conference, Gorbachev, Kofi Annan,1` Willi Brandt…

    On the other hand: Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Andrei Sakharov, Médecins Sans Frontières, Liu Xiaobo, Norman Borlaug.

    I recently visited the former home of a Peace Prize laureate: U.S. Vice President Charles Dawes, whose mansion is now the Evanston Historical Society.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Rich Rostrom,

    Pauling’s situation as the only man to win two separate Nobel prizes as an individual, a still highly regarded one in Chemistry and an almost forgotten one in Peace, is a microcosm of the whole Nobel legacy.

  • r

    getting shot does not qualify her for the prize.
    she might have been brave or shown courage but none of it helped the cause. speeches and quotes don’t do any good in real life. I don’t think her organisation has ever actually helped someone.