Category: Peace Prize
Video: What are the chances of a Gaza ceasefire deal soon?
CNA (Channel News Asia) July 6, 2025 (9 mins.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said July 6 he hoped an upcoming meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump could “help advance” a Gaza ceasefire deal, after sending negotiators to Doha for indirect talks with Hamas. Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and director of the Middle Eastern studies program at the University of San Francisco, discusses on CNA’s Asia First why he believes a lasting ceasefire in Gaza remains unlikely.
CNA.Asia & CNA YouTube channel
Interview: Jimmy Carter’s Legacy with Stephen Zunes
WORT-FM, January 9, 2025 (50 mins.): Stephen Zunes joins host Allen Ruff to critically assess the legacy of a former president, as most media tend to overlook the low points of Carter’s time in office. Carter inherited the presidency at the height of US imperialism with limited foreign-policy experience, propping up dictatorships, including his role in East Timor, Morocco, and Turkey. Ruff and Zunes also appraise his role for nuclear non-proliferation, the Carter Doctrine, the Camp David Accords of 1978, Carter’s opposition to Palestinian statehood, and after he left office, his positive contributions to what Zunes calls a “moral foreign policy” by speaking out against human rights violations. Read Stephen Zunes’s most recent article about Carter’s relationship to Israel in the Progressive.
As President, Jimmy Carter Was Not a “Peacemaker”
In These Times, January 10, 2025 by Stephen Zunes
The recent passing of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has led to some well-deserved praise of his legacy, particularly in regard to his exemplary service as a peacemaker and humanitarian since leaving the White House in 1981. During his post-presidency, he was also subjected to heavy criticism for his willingness to speak out against military intervention and the support for repressive governments offered by successive administrations of both parties. In particular, his willingness to challenge the ongoing Israeli occupation and colonization of occupied Palestinian territories was met with vehement condemnation, even from fellow Democrats. What many people forget, however, is that Carter’s administration failed to consistently uphold the principles for which Carter so admirably defended as an ex-president: peace, international law and human rights.
Jimmy Carter Warned Us About Israeli Apartheid
The Progressive January 2, 2025: The late President Jimmy Carter… was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well. Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized during the 1967 war the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist… [source]
Remembering Martin Luther King, the Radical for Peace
The Progressive April 3, 2018: King challenged the draining of our national resources for the military, opposed the Vietnam War and other aspects of U.S. foreign policy and questioned an economic system that created enormous poverty amid great wealth. He was assassinated while organizing the Poor People’s March…
Power’s Prophet: Remembering Gene Sharp
The Progressive February 1, 2018: Dr. Gene Sharp, a Harvard University-based scholar, through his through analysis of centuries of nonviolent struggle, made a convincing case on utilitarian grounds that nonviolent struggle was a more effective and successful means of resistance than violence…
[Related article & Petition]
Interview: Commentary on the OPCW and the Nobel Peace Prize
Institute for Public Accuracy October 27, 2013
Nobel Prize for OPCW: Examining Both Organizations,
Institute for Public Accuracy October 11, 2013
STEPHEN ZUNES, Professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, wrote the piece “The U.S. and Chemical Weapons: No Leg to Stand On.”Syria and the likely disastrous consequences that would have resulted.”
The 2013 Nobel Prizes Explained (video)
October 21, 2013 Video (90 min.) University of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and UCSF professors explain the scientific contributions of the 2013 Nobel prize recipients. Aparna Venkatesan, Stephen Zunes, Teresa Head-Gordon, Dean Rader, Jason Fernandes, Jesse Anttila-Hughes.
The Nobel Committee’s Rebuke to Washington’s Unilateralism
Foreign Policy In Focus October 11, 2013
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), one of the most effective instruments for international arms control, sends an important message to those who have insisted that unilateral military action is the best means to eliminate and prevent the use of these deadly agents.
Interview: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Wins Nobel Peace Prize as U.S. Opposes Calls for WMD-Free Middle East (Video)
Democracy Now October 11, 2013; Video & Transcript
As the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons wins the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, we look at international efforts to rid Syria and other countries — including the United States — of chemical weapons. Transcript
El-Baradei and the IAEA’s Nobel Peace Prize a Mixed Blessing
Foreign Policy In Focus, December 12, 2005
By John Gershman, Stephen Zunes [source]
My reaction to the awarding this past weekend of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director Mohammed El-Baradei was similar to my reaction to the awarding of the 2002 prize to former President Jimmy Carter: while they have pursued a number of policies contrary to the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize, they have also done much to make the world a safer place. On the one hand, the IAEA has helped to promote nuclear energy, an extremely dangerous, expensive, and unnecessary means of electrical generation, and has been accused of downplaying the serious health and environmental impact of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and essentially being a shill of the nuclear energy…