Word: nobels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...regularly get "item of interest" e-mails from the Situation Room staff. So that is how most staffers were notified this morning - if they were awake. Shortly after 5 a.m., the Situation Room sent out an internal e-mail with the subject line: "Item of Interest: President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize." Phones quickly started ringing after that, including a call from Gibbs to wake up Obama just before 6 a.m. Five hours later, the President strode into the Rose Garden as the globe's newest Nobel laureate...
...sooner had the Nobel Peace Prize been awarded to Barack Obama than countless observers around the globe were shaking their head in puzzlement or dismay. Sure, there was the Committee's official line, praising Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But that really didn't shed much light on why the Oslo-based committee had bestowed the prestigious honor on a President who has been in office for less than a year. As Charlotte Lepri, a researcher with the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, described her friends' and colleagues' reaction...
...like most head-scratchers right now, Lepri isn't likely anytime soon to learn how the Nobel committee came to its decision - or precisely why. For all the attention focused on its annual award, the Nobel committee is a cloistered, enigmatic operation, as hard to read as the Soviet Politburo. While its website - the only source of information the organization provides to outsiders - broadly explains the nominating and selection process, it does little to illuminate inscrutable details like what criteria defines the eventual winner, and just who weighs in on the choice. Identities of non-winning candidates - and those...
...things the website does do is shatter assumptions that the five Nobel panelists who made the decision must all be white-haired Norwegian gentlemen so cut off from reality they could have never anticipated the shock their selection would cause. First off, four of the committee members are women, with chairman Thorbjørn Jagland, the only male in the bunch. Like Jagland - a former premier and foreign minister of Norway - most members have had held cabinet posts or have otherwise been involved in politics; their ages range from 58 to 68. But it's hard to draw any theories...
Meanwhile, if the criteria and selection process for the peace award appears a bit hazy, those in the other areas are far from uniform either. Notes Philippe Valode, a French historian and author of a book on France's six Nobel winners in various categories; "Criteria for the scientific award are fairly clear and consistent, while those for economics are mostly firm - but open to subjectivity when social considerations factor in," Valode says. "Literature must have broad messages and allure to world-wide readers, But - being about art - a lot of creativity goes into the selection process, too. When...