It's About the Seed

Critics sound like the Kanye West of Nobel Prizes. The president's peace prize is for his efforts to change a foreign affairs paradigm that has ill-served the nation and the world.

Despite the predictable squawking, the Nobel Committee's decision to award the peace prize Friday to President Barack Obama is an honor in which the entire country ought to take pride.

No, nine months into his presidency, world peace has not broken out. But he has carefully created a climate in which negotiation, diplomacy and respect have supplanted bluster and obstinacy on the world stage.

It is unmistakable that his efforts have not completely borne fruit. But Obama is being awarded the prize for the seed, not the fruit. As others are observing, this rationale made possible the award in 1971 to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt for his policy of rapprochement with communist Eastern Europe, an approach that, along with prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policy and efforts by others, eventually bore much fruit.

In that vein, this 2009 prize might have the added benefit of encouraging the president to work even more tirelessly in the interest of world peace — whether the topic is a nuclear Iran, North Korea, nuclear disarmament generally, Israeli and Palestinian discord or war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does the Nobel Committee's decision have political dimensions? Sure.

But to diminish this award, one must make the leap that planting that seed and continuing to nurture it isn't in and of itself a worthy endeavor. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the crowd that equates international machismo with diplomacy and surrender with negotiation seems to be saying.

At the same time, we'd like to add our congratulations — and show a little hometown pride — to all those accolades going to Thomas Steitz, the Yale chemist and Milwaukee-area native who was one of those awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Steitz, a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and two others shared the prestigious honor Wednesday for their cellular research that revealed the structure and function of ribosomes, which transform our DNA into the proteins necessary for virtually every human action from breathing to thinking.

The work, beginning in the 1970s and continuing today, has helped scientists understand the basic machinery of life and is being used to develop a new generation of antibiotics designed to defeat resistant strains of bacteria.

Steitz was a 1962 graduate of Lawrence College (now Lawrence University in Appleton) and a 1958 graduate of Wauwatosa High School.

Both these awards — in peace and in chemistry — are well deserved.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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