It all makes for rich debate at Oslo University’s course on war, peace, and the Nobel Prize.
“There’s an element of grace and humility associated with the winners,” says Thanos Marizis, a Greek masters student, as he sits with friends in the university library.
“The prize is supposed to be a recognition of your pursuit of peace in the sense of benefiting humanity, not benefiting yourself.”
Kathleen Wright, 21, goes further: “To see people who have risked their lives and been given this award in recognition – the teenager Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban – and then for you to go around on your ego trip and have your friends call up the committee I think is laughable, it’s disrespectful.”
She believes the point of the prize is to celebrate lesser-known people or organisations doing vital work. “When you’re working towards peace, it doesn’t just begin with the figureheads, it begins with smaller groups – and I think that’s important to celebrate.”
Many world leaders are, of course, among the laureates. On the walls of the Nobel Committee room are the four American presidents who have won, including Barack Obama, awarded just months into his first term.
That has riled his successor – “if I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in ten seconds,” President Trump complained.
Those walls speak of the many issues that the laureates have fought against since 1901; wars, apartheid, nuclear weapons, climate change.
This year may be somewhat overshadowed by the campaign from the White House.
But if Donald Trump wants to find out what has happened behind that committee door, who nominated him and who he’s been up against, he’ll have a problem – the papers are kept secret for 50 years.
