Page 2 Harvard Law Record October 22, 2009
OBAMA’S NOBEL
lor Willy Brandt. In 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevwas given the prize for his policy of greater social and polit-ical openness,
perestroika
, in much the same spirit.Yet former President Jimmy Carter's efforts to bring aboutthe Camp David accords went unrecognized until 2002, after the peace he helped negotiate between Egypt and Israel wasrecognized as a durable one. Dissenters have pointed to for-mer President Bill Clinton's tireless efforts to bring about aMideast peace, in contrast to Obama's mere rhetoric, andZimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's coura-geous stand against the monopoly on power held by thatcountry's longtime president, Robert Mugabe. The "snub"against Tsvangiraiwas one of the mostcommented-onitems on Twitter inthe hours after theannouncement thatObama had wonthe prize.Comment hasalso focused on the effect the award might have on Obama's political priorities. Critics believe it is likely to intensify crit-icism that the President has achieved little in the way of ac-tual foreign policy success, despite his lofty initiatives. His persuading the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolutionon the reduction of nuclear weapons has been a rare successin a year when multilateral overtures have failed to result inmuch coordinated action on the financial crisis or other pressing global issues, such as climate change.Obama has also been slow to change direction on many policies initiated by his predecessor, George W. Bush, a pledge many have pointed to as the primary motivation for the award. His January pledge to close the controversial de-tention facility at Guantanamo Bay, for example, remains un-fulfilled. Obama has also reportedly sparred with hisAttorney General, Eric Holder, over prosecution of U.S. of-ficials involved in torture.But the Nobel might also be an intervention – an attemptto right the course of Obama's policies by persuading the president to turn away from domestic political preoccupa-tions and focus on achieving results on matters of global con-cern. While some point to the contrast between the awardand Obama's potential escalation of the increasingly deadlywar inAfghanistan, the committee might have, in effect, beenforcing the juxtaposition with its announcement - forcingObama to rethink his strategy there.Previous recipients of the award have led countries intoconflicts, however: critics of the award often cite the timeHenry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the prize for whatturned out to be a short-lived peace in Vietnam, and IsraeliPrime Minister Menachem Beginwon for signingthe Camp Davidaccords withEgypt, before promoting theconstruction of Israeli settlementsin Palestinian territories and involving his country in theLebanese civil war of the 1980s.Whatever the award's implications or consequences, it re-mains a tremendous achievement for the young president,whose life has been marked by early triumphs and firsts.Thefirst African-American editor of the
HarvardLawReview
and the first black President, he is now the second HarvardLaw School alumnus to win the award, and the first to beable to claim it as his own right (DavidA. Morse '32 acceptedthe award on behalf of the International Labor Organizationin 1969). He will now be the third sitting U.S. President towin the award, afterTheodore Roosevelt andWoodrowWil-son, and, with Carter, the fourth President to receive it.Clearly surprised himself, the President brushed off anyspeculation he would not accept the award some have called"premature" during a Rose Garden press conference. “I amhonored and humbled," he said. “I will accept this award asa call to action”.
Obama will be the second HLS alum to accept thePrize. DavidA. Morse ’32 accepted it on behalf of the International Labor Organization in 1969.
S P E C I A LC O M M E N T
and the establishment of the mergers and acquisitions bou-tique, Wasserstein Perella Group. Over his several decadeson Wall Street, Wasserstein made history through his coor-dination of blockbuster mergers like the acquisition of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the acquisitionof Warner Bros. by Time, Inc., and the merger of AOL andTimeWarner in 2000.After the sale ofWasserstein Perella &Co., Wasserstein became the head of Lazard Ltd., where heorganized the investment bank’s 2005 IPO and where the
WallStreetJournal
reports he was recently engaged in the bid by Kraft for Cadbury Plc.Despite his phenomenal success on Wall Street, Wasser-stein’s beginnings as a law student were characterized by a passion for civil liberties. Mark J. Green ’70, who ran againstWasserstein to be the head of the
HarvardCivilRights-Civil LibertiesLawReview
, remembers a quiet genius who “basi-cally brained his way to success”. Green, who has had a longcareer in public advocacy, has written twenty-two books, andwas the Democratic candidate for mayor of NewYork in the2001 election against Michael Bloomberg, was a lifelongfriend of Wasserstein. “Looking back, I guess it was impos-sible to know that this fellow law student, who I would eatwith at Harkness 42 years ago, would end up the leading in-vestment banker of his era and one of the leading donors toHLS ever,” said Green in an interview with the
Record
. “Itwasn’t pedigree or GQ looks, or a Clintonian public person-ality. He added value, big time, to his clients and his friends.”When Green won the place as editor-in-chief at
CR-CL
, hemade Wasserstein his managing editor, a partnership whichwould continue in their work for Ralph Nader ’58. Together they authored the book
WithJusticeforSome:AnIndictment oftheLawbyYoungAdvocates
and worked together on“Closed Enterprise System”, a critical view of antitrust en-forcement. “He was always the smartest guy in the room,”said Green. “But by and large he was calm and quiet, sowhen he spoke, people listened.” Nader remembers Wasser-stein as a bright, ambitious man with a dream of being Chair-man of the SEC, but whose business responsibilities precluded such a career. “If he had been Chairman ten yearsago, we might not have had some of this trouble,” said Nader in an interview for the
HarvardLawRecord
.As a philanthropist,Wasserstein was a generous man, hav-ing recently made a major donation to HLS of $25 million for the construction of the Northwest Corner complex. ButGreen remembers him for both his generosity and his loy-alty. “If he took you into his orbit of confidence at a personallevel, a company level, or an educational level, he stuck withyou in good times and bad.” In Green’s campaign to becomemayor of New York, Wasserstein acted as his campaign fi-nance manager, and though Green had a history as a populistconsumer advocate, Wasserstein was able to convince hisWall Street colleagues to support his campaign. In a remem- brance published to Bloomberg.com on October 20
th
, Greensaid that even after his defeat in the 2001 mayoral election hereceived encouragement from Wasserstein to “run for gov-ernor”. “The understanding was that I shouldn’t advise himon business, but he could counsel me on government.”In addition to his investment banking activity,Wassersteincarried an interest in writing throughout his life, which Greendescribed in his Bloomberg.com remembrance, analogizingWasserstein to Charles Foster Kane. From his early experi-ence as editor-in-chief at the
MichiganDaily
, as managingeditor at the
HarvardCR-CLLawReview
, and his work withGreen and Nader, Wasserstein returned to publishing as anowner by purchasing
AmericanLawyer
and
NewYorkMag-azine
, partly with the goal of improving publication quality.“All his deals and billions notwithstanding, Wasserstein’s‘rosebud’was journalism,” said Green.With his untimely passage the HLS community can onlyimagine the accomplishments that may have been yet tocome. Nader looks back with certainty that the communityhas lost one of its most valuable citizens. “BruceWassersteinis heralded as a brilliant investment banker and financier whoavoided the egregious excesses of his speculative competi-tors. What is not known is his philanthropy, which was ac-celerating into imaginative dimensions. Philanthropically, itcan be said that the best of his past would have been the leastof his future, so tragically cut short.” Despite its early end,Wasserstein’s life will be remembered, in Wall Street and New York for his legendary business acumen, and at Har-vard Law School for his generous contribution to the con-struction of the Northwest Corner.greatest peacemakers.The selection of President Barack Obama ’91 as this year's Peace Prize re-cipient was an incredible surprise and anotable event in the history of the Prizein being only the third time a sittingU.S. President has been so honored.Even the President himself was sur- prised by his receipt of the prize, re- portedly not even aware that he hadeven been nominated. The shock of thenews left commentators and the publicdisoriented, and as the novelty of theidea faded, the diversity of reactions tothe President's Nobel became crystal-ized in opinions with little correspon-dence to individual political alignment.Arch-conservatives certainly did nothesitate to co-opt this latest honor as anew focal point around which to con-centrate their perpetual campaignagainst the President, asking the ques-tion, “What has Obama done to deservethis Prize?” and deriding it as a politicalmaneuver by a cadre of socialist Euro- peans who are more enamored withObama than his own American sup- porters.On the other side of the aisle, many praised the Prize as a stamp of interna-tional approval on a drastically re-designed American foreign policy andvision of the nation within the worldcommunity. Talk, they said, is no smallthing when it moves the world to for-give past failings and unite once again behind the U.S. banner. But many of thevoices criticizing the Nobel commit-tee's selection came from supporters of the President, with a common chorussoon becoming, “Too much, too soon.”As the present controversy fades intohistorical evaluation, President Obamawill be compared to other laureates notfor the actions of his first one hundreddays but for the lasting impact of histerm in office, but even from the mo-ment of its announcement, the historyof the prize reveals a range of figuresinto which the President already fits asa rising leader of efforts at internationalcooperation and the limitation of theweapons of war.To the rue of many Re- publicans, the conditions for Obama'ssuccess were made abundantly possible by the policies of his predecesor,George W. Bush, but this should in noway diminish the significance of ac-tions that have changed the interna-tional tide of hostility against Americawhich was rising throughout the Bushera. The Nobel committee has given uscause to consider that the President hasthus far demonstrated a new vision of international cooperation, a new com-mitment to multilateralism, and a nu-anced understanding of the give andtake that is necessary to coax his coun-terparts to depart from the inherentlystubborn and vindictive behavior of na-tional leaders and humans in general.From the moment he took office, thePresident expressed a desire to end thewidely criticized conduct of the U.S.military at Guantanamo Bay, he beganthe acceleration of the draw down of
Nobel
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Donors
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