Stories
The brain mechanisms of aggression
Motivational systems of social behavior
International Society for Research on Aggression
Behavior Genetics Association Ethics Committee
The World Wide
Runners Club
for Peace
United Nations University for Peace
Charlie Robbins, barefoot runner
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On my brief trip to Europe in the summer of 1980 I went first to the ISRA meetings in Holland and then to the physiological congress in Budapest. There, I met up again with Neal Miller and along with Teresa Moura of Portugal, we had lunch together at the zoo. I still recall our conversation next to the flamingos, where Miller and I decided to work together for peace at the United Nations. His idea was to set up some kind of research project on war and peace, and I already had in mind something like the Seville Statement from the ISRA meetings where I had just met Santiago Genoves.
On our return from Budapest, Miller made calls to the National Academy of Sciences, the State Department and the Library of Congress, and had the library send materials to me which included mention of a Costa Rican initiative, supported by the United States, for a UN University of Peace (UNUP). There was already a UN University in Tokyo (UNU), but it was not doing much for peace. Later I heard that the UNUP was not a serious proposal by the United States, but a ploy to get Costa Rica elected to the Security Council from Latin America instead of Cuba whose turn it was.
Neal Miller with me in Moscow with K.V. Sudakov and another scientist
Costa Rica was elected to the Security Council as planned, and the US backed off its promise of funding. But oil prices had skyrocketed and Mexico and Venezuela had money, so they decided to fund the UNUP. Ironically, a project that the US had helped to invent as a ploy would now become a reality!
I went to see Ralph Townley at the UN who had been appointed commissioner for the University. As I wrote to the ISRA Committee of Correspondence on December 20, 1980:
Mr. Townley was especially anxious to receive input from our organization concerning the curriculum and goals of this new university ... in order to serve in a consulting capacity to the University by way of the UN Secretariat, it is necessary for ISRA to register itself as a "non-governmental organization" with the United Nations.This was the spark that led me to the UN, beginning with the registration of ISRA as an official NGO.
Although ISRA's NGO status was not formalized until 1983 due to the heavy bureaucratic machinery of the UN, I started working informally with other NGOs to support the UNUP as early as the spring of 1981. I wrote to Neal Miller on March 29:
Thank you for hosting our luncheon last week. I was pleased that you had a chance to share with me some of the enthusiasm that Archie Singham and Aage Nielsen are bringing to the new University for Peace. they will not be content with an old-fashioned ivory tower, but will strive to make it an active force for world peace.Archie Singham was a Black man from Guyana who used his post at UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) to criticize and provoke the United States and other power brokers at the UN, while Aage Nielsen was a Danish professor who was instrumental in establishing the Association for World Education. His gentleness as a person belied his history of having been active in the resistance against the Nazis during World War II. Aage got John Lennon interested in working with us to support the UNUP, but our first meeting never took place because it was scheduled for the week after Lennon was assassinated in December 1980.
Rodrigo Carazo, under whose presidency in Costa Rica, the UNUP was established, recognized the contribution of ISRA by coming to our Mexico City meetings in August 1982 and we set up a meeting a month later at the UN in New York. I then wrote him a letter about the work I was doing to engage other UN NGOs in support of the University, and said the following about the proposal for a documentation center:
At this time, I think that it is more important to spend resources on people, bringing them together as teachers, students, colleagues, disciples and missionaries for peace ... Of course, a University must have a library, but perhaps it could best be developed by contributions from each person who comes to it. Let them build the library from their own resources.He wrote back:
I received the letters that you sent me of the people you corresonded with about the University for Peace, and I deeply thank you for your permanent help and interest in this project ... In reference to your personal letter, I must say that I agree with you in ... spending resources on people and having them build a library ...
My involvement with the UNUP came up again in March 1999 when I took part in the meetings held by Federico Mayor at UNESCO. Mayor made an agreement with Maurice Strong and his right-hand man, Martin Lees, to reconstitute the leadership of the University. I had lunch with Lees and he agreed in principle to my proposal that the curriculum would be organized along the 8 program areas of the culture of peace in the UN Programme of Action which was being adopted by the UN General Assembly at that point. I also met Strong in passing at that time who agreed verbally with this proposal. Lees became the rector of the University, but my curriculum proposal got lost in their work of reorganization over the next few years.
The UNUP continues to attract good people, although the leadership continues to change, and as of 2008, I continued to maintain an indirect relation with its faculty, including Abelardo Brenes and Alicia Cabezudo.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme