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Barack Obama

#USIH2020 Roundtable: African-American Intellectuals and Their Critics

On 10 December 2009, President Barack Obama delivered his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “A Just and Lasting Peace,” in Oslo, Norway. The speech was surprisingly bellicose. As “the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars,” Obama mounted a defense of the use of force in certain instances as “not only necessary but morally justified.” Quoting the words of his fellow Nobel laureate, Martin Luther King, that “Violence never brings permanent peace,” Obama acknowledged his indebtedness to King’s life and work. At the same time, Obama, as a head of state, was bound to confront Read more