Stephen Gardbaum 0:03
Welcome, my name is Steven Gardbaum. I'm a faculty member here at the law school. I'm also faculty director of the promise Institute for Human Rights. We're here today to celebrate curiosity others wonderful new biography of Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and UCLA class of 1927. The co sponsors our promise Institute, the International commodity law program, the Burkle center of international relations, which now also directs us to the Ralph J. Bunche. Center for African American Studies. On behalf of these programs, we would like to acknowledge you say his presence on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino Tongva peoples. We have a very distinguished panel to discuss the book, which is how rusty Allah who is the promised Institute, Distinguished Professor of comparative and international law at UCLA, and professor at UCLA International Institute, and US Ben Bradley, who is Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA, and professor of law here at the law school. And we're going to be featuring opening remarks by Ralph Bunche. The third on the screen. He is the grandson, Ralph Bunche, and the General Secretary of the underrepresented nation and people's organization. But the structure is that we're after the opening remarks by Ralph Bunche. We're going to have a conversation between our other two panelists, then we'll open up for questions from the audience. And that's both from the live and the online audience. So if you are online, you can use the question and answer session on Zoom. So with that, if I could invite Ralph Bunche, the third to make his opening comments. Thanks.
Ralph Bunche III 1:44
Thank you, and thank you for providing me the opportunity to speak sorry, to Cal have, turning yourselves around the CME really is, there's a lot to say about this book. There's frankly, far too much for me to cover here, with the organization that I've been running for the last four years focuses on the right to self determination, decolonization and UN reform. And there's really so much of political relevance to these subjects in this book. But I think that's better to leave that discussion for others, frankly, more qualified to speak about it. What I wanted to do here is to talk about three things that I particularly love about this book that make it very meaningful to me, from a personal rather than professional perspective. And really, from a personal perspective is extremely important. I was born after my grandfather passed away, I never had a chance to meet him. So all I know of him, are the stories that are handed down to me by my by my family, by colleagues and friends, and by the writing people by the by the books that have been written about his career and his own writing. And this book has been extremely meaningful to me in three particular ways to get to understand sort of how I feel about my grandfather, and really just why I think it's an extremely important book to come out today. Only two of those really are about the contents of the book. So I hope you'll excuse me on that. But I'll start with the contents. I think, you know, the thing that really stands out to me about this book, is the way in which it helps to show a measure of continuity about my grandfather's career, that, quite frankly, I think, you know, hasn't been fully set out before in anything that's been written about him, or any people that I've spoken to, because people who who have known him knew him from his academic stage of his career, or knew him when he was working on decolonization work or knew him as a, as a leading person in UN peacekeeping. And often the books themselves are focused in those individual areas. And I think one of the things I've always felt was a bit disjointed is is the sort of overarching understanding of where he came from, what what, why he was doing what he was doing. It always seems like everything was accidental. He did this academic work, he worked on civil rights in the United States, and decolonization in Africa. And then he went into UN peacekeeping, almost as if they were three separate parts of a career that was quite accidental. And in many ways, that's true. It was in many ways unplanned. And it's also a nature of who he was. He wasn't sort of, you know, prone to big speeches about who he was and about his overarching theory. But actually, this book got gets at an aspect of his of his career over arching aspect of his career that I think is really meaningful to me. And, and in particular, I think it comes out when Ken was talking about his time, in Togo and under homie where counsel says, you know, this really set him off on the intellectual and professional trajectory that would guide the rest of his career. And in particular, that was the importance of keeping local people and their preferences, Central and governance decisions. And I think that even that statement and of itself is so It's critically important to understand who he was. And the way that cal also was able to draw a link between that, and decolonization and the end of Empire and the need for UN peacekeeping as a tool for ending empire that I think is quite unique. And for me, at least, it's it's really helped me understand a little bit more about where he came from, and his overarching beliefs, belief system that that led him to throughout his career. The second thing that I want to emphasize, that's incredibly important to me, is where it was written. It was written by Cal at UCLA in Los Angeles, which is extremely important as a to understand where he came from, if he didn't spend, actually that much of his life in LA, and certainly much less of his life at UCLA. But these were really foundational parts of his life. And everything that I've ever learned about my grandfather, has always been that UCLA was was was, was at its heart of his life. It was in Los Angeles that he found his home, his first year, his true home, it's within the black community of Los Angeles, that he was empowered to go out beyond Los Angeles to the rest of the world. And it was at UCLA where he was able to be empowered to become even in an incredibly segregated and oppressive society that it was in the 1920s, to become someone who believed he could be an equal citizen of the United States and of the world. And it's, it's, it's for that reason, and I think, very important to emphasize, it's for that reason that the papers, his papers were, were given to UCLA, as the as the best stewards of his of his writing his thought and of his life. And the whole team, over in the in the archives, have been doing a wonderful job preserving that. And I think it's very meaningful now to have a book written at UCLA, published that UCLA and now launched here at UCLA. Because we've not had that before. And so for that, it's also extremely meaningful to me. And then the final thing I just really want to talk about, and it's actually the one that sticks out almost more to me than anything else, is the way the books written. You'll never know this. And I think by reading it, but you know, Cal has been been able to review papers of a very sensitive nature that were not available to other people reviewing his life and career writing about him yet to date. Obviously, there's been a bit more time between the end of the Cold War and the fundamental reshaping that we see of the of the world today. And and book than it has been in other books. And that gives candidates a unique opportunity perspective to evaluate his life in a way from a distance from the compared to other biographers who knew my grandfather. And from the family's perspective, that can be quite nerve racking, it can be quite scary to think about somebody, you know, digging into his life and career and reevaluating who he is. And every step of the way, I think it's very important to emphasize, Ken has been incredibly sensitive to us and the family has been incredibly inclusive of us. There have been moments where callus found little notes that my grandfather wrote that Carol thought would be very meaningful for me or for others, that he shared with me stories about my grandfather and my father's relationship. And my father's, you know, being sent off to Vietnam, and my, my grandfather felt about that, and other little sort of personal anecdotes that can center along the way. And he's been doing that not just with me, but with other members of our family. And it's it's just been a wonderful experience working with cam on this. I truthfully don't know what a biographer should do or how they are meant to act or work. They also hope how, why we're saying this, I also can't I don't think we consider yourself a biographer at all. But, you know, however, a biographer should act. I believe that what how can acted and conducted over the last three years, his relationship with us in the family has been a real model. And it's something that I have taken to be, you know, very meaningful for me, and something that I'm truly grateful for. So more than anything else, I thank Cal for that and his relationship with us, and the sensitivity with which he's handled all of the documents he's been able to review and his life. So thank you for that.
Stephen Gardbaum 9:34
Thanks. So we'll now turn for about half an hour to a conversation between our two other terrific panelists. Thank you. Well, I
Anna Spain Bradley 9:41
want to welcome
Kal Raustiala 9:43
Ralph, thank you so much for saying all that. I really appreciate that. You
Anna Spain Bradley 9:49
want to add that too. But I want to welcome everyone in the room today and on Zoom. If your students at UCLA Bruins at UCLA work here, your colleagues, your community members, we really do want to welcome you. It is so wonderful to be able to gather together in the spirit of the late great Ralph Bunche. And I want to thank Ralph, if he's still there on the screen, we're just making this more than thought as important as thought is, but making it heart and soul. Writing a book, let alone writing a book about somebody who has an American icon, and a global treasure must have taken everything you could put into it. So we are here to learn about the great international icon American diplomat, human rights and civil rights leader, and Bruin. That is Ralph Bunche. We are also here to learn by reliving his memories, his experiences, his challenges and how he overcame them. That's been brought to us a new with depth and care by our author, and our Distinguished Professor calvess, yellow. So I'm excited to engage in a conversation with Cal today. And also, just to say, as a personal note, it's a great honor for me, Ralph Bunche, has been somebody since I was 15 years old that I looked up to. I'm a black American woman who worked at the State Department as a former diplomat, international lawyer and mediator. And there weren't a lot of work bearers to look to, to see how you navigate those spaces, depending on who you are, and what you can bring. And so it's a great honor and joy for me to take part of this. Alright, let's get into it. So hello, Congratulation. Thank you. How does it feel to be at this point, after years of research, and writing, and pouring everything into this to celebrate your new book, your third book? And what does it mean to bring a conclusion to this portion of both your career and your life?
Kal Raustiala 12:02
Well, that's a really interesting set of questions. So before I get into it, I just want to emphasize that Anna, everything I said, is correct. And she is someone who has been very helpful to me throughout the process of writing this book. And I really appreciate all the input that you gave me and all the assistance, it's obviously a great honor to be able to, to do something like this, it feels really good. I think many people here have have written either books, or long papers, or some project, PhD theses, whatever it is. And I think we all who have done that, know that when you get to the end of the road, it's always sort of exhausting. You're a bit sick of it. But it's also, you know, a wonderful feeling to kind of get over the finish line. And so yeah, I'm really happy to be doing it. And I was just inspired by what Ralph said about the UCLA connection, it was really interesting. It's a big part of why I ended up writing it was knowing something about him coming to UCLA, having an office in buncha Hall for so many years, and then getting entranced by his story and a chance to tell not only his story, but the story of the United Nations of the post war era, a bunch of things that I was able to kind of, ideally, I hope, kind of thread together in an overarching narrative. That was really very satisfying to do. So anyway, I'm happy to, I'm happy to be done. I'm happy, it's out.
Anna Spain Bradley 13:19
Wonderful. So we're gonna start for those of you who haven't seen the cover, we're gonna start where the book starts. And the book, in the beginning chapter, kind of talks about what Ralph Bunche in his lifetime was perhaps most well known for. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. And cow brilliantly describes, not just the moment, but the feeling of walking on stage, the feeling of accepting the award, and all that came out of that moment. This was for Funches role as a mediator in the late 1940s. But in many, many really tough complex matters between Egypt and Israel. And that launched him to glory. He was the first African American and the first person of African descent, to receive any Nobel Prize at the time. So in the book, how you write, quote, the mediation in the Middle East changed his life. What do you mean by that?
Kal Raustiala 14:20
So by the time Ralph Bunche, gets to the mediation that Anna was referencing, he this is in 1948 49, mostly 49. By this point, he has kind of just to kind of give a little bit of the arc of his life. He had been at UCLA, as Ralph mentioned, had lived in LA, had then gone to Howard University, first to Harvard than to Howard had been a professor had been brought into the American government initially, as actually an intelligence analyst and what becomes the CIA, and then over to the State Department, and then eventually to the UN. So by the time he does this mediation, he's at the United Nations very early years. The UN. And he is very successful as that trajectory suggests, he's someone who has had a lot of professional success. And as a black man in 1840s, America, unbelievable success. But he's not a conventionally famous person. He's not well known to ordinary Americans. He's gotten a few profiles in the black press at this point about this unusual figure in the State Department, and then at the new UN, but that's it. And then he goes, and we can talk more about the Palestine episode, but he's brought in after the initial mediator is assassinated on the streets of Jerusalem. He is then as deputy mediator elevated to prime mediator is very successful. Once he wins the Nobel Peace Prize, he gets a ticker tape parade down Broadway, he gives us Picture award at the 1951 Academy Awards. He's basically in every newspaper, whatever little version of television exists, I guess, at that time, hardly any. But he's all over the world, as a figure that has a kind of magic touch, and this very important postwar issue of diplomacy. So it's transformative for his career. But it's also transformative for who he was, he becomes an icon. Ironically, he's still like a mid level official at the UN, after he wins the prize. He doesn't like immediately get a promotion. He's just some guy who's in this bureaucracy. But he's not just some guy. He's someone who's really, really well known. And sort of instantly kind of celebrity
Anna Spain Bradley 16:32
said, What does it take to get a promotion? Yeah. So when Ralph Bunche accepted the Nobel, he said this, quote, there are some in the world who are prematurely resigned to the inevitability of war. Among them are the advocates of preventative war, who in their resignation to war wish merely to select their own time and initiating it. He went on to say the objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace, as international lawyer and scholar that you are, you know, in this field, we're well versed in the idea of preventative war did anything about your experience and getting to know Ralph Bunche? Changed your own view on preventative war?
Kal Raustiala 17:24
It's a really interesting question. I have not thought about that. I mean, I think he probably not on preventative issues, I think he learning about his work as a mediator. And appreciating that conflicts could be managed, not solved, but necessarily sometimes saw but at least managed. That was really something I knew, of course, something about your mediator. Alexandra is a mediator, I've worked with other people who are mediators. But this was a another level to it. And I really got into the nitty gritty of it. And that was a, you know, I guess, enlightening in the sense that there was more that can be done. And so I have maybe a renewed focus or interest in mediation for conflict. All of that said, I think he were here, he would agree that there are some conflicts that cannot be mediated. For him, his personal experience, the one that was most striking was, of course, Vietnam, too big, too, too much at stake, for that ever to really work. So I think he himself understood the limitations. But aside from true superpower conflict, and that would probably apply to Ukraine and Russia today, though people talk about mediation, or that it's very difficult. You can do more with mediation, and maybe I appreciate it. So that part, yes.
Anna Spain Bradley 18:45
I think the other international law question before we move into Ralph's life more deeply is this idea of colonialism. He was coming up in the 20s and 30s, as a undergrad here at UCLA for a PhD student at Harvard, and he was focused on the cause of ending empire, as you describe. So with that, you know, he did so much in this space. throughout the decades, he wrote his first book, a world view on race, which is I believe in the archive, he, you know, Cal in the book describes this evocative moment where Ralph is on a large ship. I don't know what we call it in the 30s. Yeah, sure. ocean liner vessel approaching French West Africa and his later years in South Africa. And you know, he had all of these touch points that then landed him in the role of helping architect the post world war two un trustees ship system to help countries who sought independence who sought self determination transition from colonialism to something new. Why do you think that for bunch this was his life's work throughout? decades. Why was colonialism and ending colonialism so important to him?
Kal Raustiala 20:05
Yeah, really good question. So, you know when he's at UCLA so first of all for all the students in the room and anyone because everybody here is sort of a Bruin. It wasn't this campus back then. It was what's now LA Community College. I think it was a different campus. And it wasn't even technically UCLA we pretend like of course, was UCLA was actually University of California southern branch. So there was only one university, though, little technicalities for the Bruins. But yes, he, he loves UCLA as as Rothbard mentioned. And when he was here, as a student, he started to think a little bit about international affairs, but not that much. Actually, he gave a very interesting speech. At one point, there was some kind of competition. And he talks about international organizations and peace and murder. This is remember between the wars, so he doesn't know that World War Two is coming. But he's talking about the problems of war. And so it's sort of on his mind. But when he shows up at Harvard for his graduate work, in the Ph. D program, he's not focused on international affairs initially, let alone decolonization. But he's drawn to it. And I think he was drawn to it for a number of reasons. One, because it was a tool of racial oppression. And he, from personal experience, understood that and was concerned about that, and was politically active, even then, they become much more politically active later. But he's interested in that as an issue. And two, he's sort of drawn to Africa. He's interested in Africa. So he's like, poking around at different things. And he's interested in international organizations, he thinks about the League of Nations a little bit, he has a possible project related to that maybe something related to slavery, comparative. So he's fishing around for different topics for his PhD, and then eventually lights on this comparative study of colonial governance, where he looks at French West Africa, and he looks at what's both a League of Nations mandate, territory, which was a kind of specific process by which the victors in World War One had been given territories taken from other losers in the war, to have as their own colonies and shepherd, supposedly, to freedom, and then kind of ordinary colony. And he's comparing. And so in some ways, it was just a little bit of happenstance. So he was in that zone, but he ends up lighting on this particular topic. And it's a pretty good topic. And then when he ends up going and doing his fieldwork, which really, almost no one had done, he was one of the very first people to do any kind of fieldwork in Africa, that really sets him off. And he sees this as a huge issue of justice, an interesting political problem, and an important kind of geopolitical thing. So it kind of starts to wrap together for him. And he stays in that for the rest of his life.
Anna Spain Bradley 22:54
And I think that's so interesting, tying back to what we heard from Ralph Bunche, the third, this question that strikes all of us at some point, what you can do, the impact that you can have in the world is shaped by who you are. And for Ralph, I now want to turn to his experience, as a younger person growing up in America at the time that he did as a black man, as a black diplomat, and to the title of the book, the absolutely indispensable man. You vividly describe throughout the book, these tense, what I will call dichotomies, were here he is Ralph Bunche, the allotted diplomat walking at the side of presidents and Secretary General's on one hand, and the next week, he's traveling, and he it segregation. And it's Jim Crow, and he can't sit with everybody else. And he's subject to constant indignities. And I think, you know, Cal explains this in the preface to the book. No, he takes great care, you do cow to think about how, as an author and biographer, do you tell the story of somebody whose life and experiences necessarily are really different from your own, while still not shying away from those sorts of moments? Because that's what shaped Ralph Bunche. So I think we would all benefit from understanding what you learned, perhaps through those notes and things that hadn't been looked at before in the archives. How did Ralph Bunche for decades, hold these multiple identities? And what kind of emotional and personal toll did it take on him?
Kal Raustiala 24:35
Yeah, that's a really hard question. So so first of all, I did struggle with this issue. And you know, you and others were very helpful in kind of thinking through how to deal with these dimensions of his life. And, you know, I'll note as as I think many of you know, that is not the first biography and so there are other books out there that I think cover to some degree, his personal life and other aspects of his career. in greater depth. I focus on a kind of particular angle I'm, but nonetheless that is hugely important. And you're absolutely right. And he, when he's at the State Department, for example, one of the reasons that he's attracted to the UN when he gets first he's sort of seconded from the State Department. And then he's given the opportunity to stay at the UN. And he takes it in large part to get out of Jim Crow, Washington. That is a huge part of the it's not the only reason he's, he's already a true believer in the UN. He thinks the UN is really important. The salaries are tax free. There's a few advantages, but there's no question that Jim Crow in Washington was something that he could barely tolerate, and that he wanted to get his job. Ralph's father, Ralph, Jr. had been born, there were two older sisters as well. We wanted to get his kids out of that, and bring them to New York, which by no means was a racial paradise. But compared to Washington, at that point in time, was significantly better. So this was something he's constantly navigating. And you're right. He's, of course, going back to Washington periodically. He's trot, every president tries to bring him back. So true man tries to bring him back offers him I think, Assistant Secretary of State, and then every other, you know, Eisenhower, they're all trying to bring him back. And he always says no, as he does to Harvard, as he does to Princeton, as he does to all these incredible academic opportunities he gets, he always says, No, I think with regard to Washington, a lot of it was related to the issues of segregation in Washington. But of course, by the 60s, things have changed. And Washington or New York are less different at that point. But he still doesn't do it. But anyway, yeah, that was a huge, huge challenge for him. He were he here, he would probably point to his grandmother, who essentially raises him from 14 on and instills in him. This is his words, a strong sense of racial pride, but also a strong sense that he could compete with anyone. And as he himself said, in several occasions, he loves to compete, especially against white people. And so that was sort of a motivating for so it was both something that was difficult, but kind of gave him energy in his telling. So I'm sure he obscured some of the difficulties because he was a relentlessly optimistic person. So I suspect, and there's substantial evidence to suggest that he wasn't always maybe honest, even with himself about some of the challenges. But he viewed this as something that he could rise above, and that he can actually win. And in fact, he did.
Anna Spain Bradley 27:31
So I want to this is critical. And I want to go there in a moment. But there are two women in Ralph's life, at least who, but for them, he would not have been all that he was Lucy, his grandmother, and Ruth, his wife, and just tell us a little bit about their stories as figures in their own right. And, you know, are you going to write a biography next about? I'd like to know more about Lucy.
Kal Raustiala 28:00
Yeah, well, so I'll just emphasize again, this is pretty much a professional biography. So there's not a ton of like family life. Ruth, his wife appears that many times, but I don't really get into their, their relationship very much. And his grandmother appears early on, she passes away when he's at Harvard, in graduate school. So she kind of exits the story pretty early, but she's a huge influence. And he throughout his life is constantly talking about her and her. So. So I said a little bit about her, I'll guess I'll just add in terms of his grandmother, she really pushed him to go to college number one, which was, first of all for, for black Americans in the 20s. Unbelievably rare, but just to put in context, only 4% of Americans went to college in the 1920s. So college alone was a very rare thing. So for him to have gone to college, incredibly rare, but she pushed him from the beginning. And even in high school as he sort of steered into some kind of vocational track. She says, No, my, my grandson is going to college. And you know, he was a bit unsure about it, but he does it. And of course, it all works out. So she's a huge influence. And he's constantly referencing her later in life. Ruth, his wife, so first of all they meet when she is his student. She's at Howard. He's like, trying to think how old not good with math. He's very young. He'd only done his master's at Harvard when Howard hires him. And she actually takes a class with him. And at one point, she goes and argues about her grade. She didn't like the B plus that he gave her and he, you know, he's like, stood firm, but he kind of liked how she stood up to him. And anyway, we don't encourage Yeah, this is a different time. This is it's a different era. So but the point is, they you know, they meet pretty early on and, and then yeah, she's there and honestly, she it would be interesting to know what the kind of family lore is, but my impression is from letters and so forth. whereas if she had a hard life, in the sense that, you know, Ralph Monge was an incredible person who had an incredible life, but so much of this occurs away from home, he is constantly on the road, the book details, you know, his experiences in Palestine, he's there for months and months and months, and then goes back for many more months. He's in Congo, when Congo becomes independent. But what he thinks is gonna be a couple of weeks. And he tells me, I'm gone for a couple of weeks, and it turns out to be three months, and he practically gets killed. And many times he practically gets killed. So so there are numerous moments where he's either in great danger, and of course, there's no like, emailing happening. So she has letters are taking a really long time, she has no idea what's going on. She's very frustrated with him. So you know, he had to be a challenging person to be married to, and she admired his success. But there were times in letters where she sort of like, okay, can you now be home, essentially. So I think it was hard to raise his three kids. That was a tough, so she deserves her own biography, for sure. I'm probably not the person to write it, but she deserves
Anna Spain Bradley 31:04
that will raise a glass to group. Thank you for that. So I want to turn we have a few minutes left, I want to turn back home. Ralph Bunche, as you all are learning and have seen and may already know, is doing incredible, groundbreaking things in the international space in the 40s and 50s. At the same time, here at home, the civil rights movement is heating up. And before it becomes a movement, lots of people are threatened or killed or hurt or harmed or, you know, losing economic, social cultural sensibilities and rights. And there was a strong critique. For, you know, predecessors and contemporaries of Ralph Bunche, in this space in the United States, why aren't you doing more here? Why aren't you turning your brilliance in your power to help at home to help us Cal ends the book not to do a spoiler alert, but it's a brilliant line. And it's a quote from bunch who says, As a negro, my demand is very simple. I want I just want to be an American. Now, I will tell you a secret when I read that I got emotional because Ralph Bunche was the same age as my grandfather. And he used to say the same kind of thing. And, you know, he grew up sharecropping on tobacco farm farm in North Carolina, former plantation still there, and had a very certain outlook that at that point, when when they grew up, you just wanted to be what you deserve to be, which was a citizen of this country. Fast forward to the civil rights generation, Ralph son, at my dad's era, and it was different. You wanted to take pride in your background, the struggle, the many things that had happened, and there was tension between father and son. And this, I just want to sort of give you an opportunity to talk about what Ralph Bunche faced, in not being perhaps solely focused on the United States at a time in which so many people wanted his focus there.
Kal Raustiala 33:13
Ya know, that's a really interesting theme. So he starts off his career when he's at Howard, pretty deeply involved in what was the civil rights movement at that time, which happened to be a more internationalist version in a lot of ways. And so he's deeply involved in the formation of the National Negro Congress. He serves on the board of NAACP throughout his career. So he keeps ties to at one point, he's considered to be president of NAACP. He's, he's active. But absolutely as he goes through his career, and as he gets to the UN, his focus is on Cyprus, or Yemen or all these different conflicts that are going on around the world. And so he is drawn away from those things. And in fact, towards the end of his career, at one point, he gets a letter from some students at Howard, who basically say, Hey, we're sitting around in the dorm talking about different people. And we've noticed you don't seem to do very much on the Civil Rights Movement. We're wondering what you're up to. And he is like hopping mad about this letter, because he feels like this is an affront and you know, so he kind of sends this pretty testy reply back to these undergrads. But they had a point. I mean, they missed a lot of the stuff that he was doing, but they had a point. And so for sure, as the 60s Move on, he is re engaging. And part of the reason he's, he's re engaging is because up until that point, he felt as a kind of scrupulous international civil servant. He had to stay out of American politics. He couldn't be deeply involved in America couldn't be commenting on American politics, he thought, and he was of course also extremely busy. So there were like multiple things that were pushing him away but by the mid 60s, he is trying to retire from the UN and no one is letting him retire because As he is absolutely indispensable man, they do not want him to leave. And so he's everyone from the President of the United States on down and sort of saying, you really need to stay at the UN. So he stays. But I think internally, part of the deal is he's going to speak out more. And, of course, at the same time, Martin Luther King is sort of ascendant as a particular he's not the only figure, but he's an important figure. And as the other American Nobel Peace Prize winner, black American Nobel Peace Prize winner, they are connected, and they are interested in one another, and they see a kind of alliance, they like one another. So he does more and more and more. But at the, you know, at the same time, there are many people, Malcolm X, in particular, who view Ralph Bunche, as someone who is simply out of style, a man of the past the white man's favorite black man, not a person who's going to lead things forward. King doesn't see things that way, King, I think, recognizes bunch, bunch of value, and sort of vice versa. So they work pretty closely together. And there's many famous photographs of them marching arm in arm or appearing together and various things at the UN and elsewhere. So he definitely tries to reengage. And he's the last thing I'll say is he's, he's troubled. And I talked about this in the book, these two themes of racial oppression abroad, through the form of colonialism, and racial oppression at home, these two sides of a coin for him sort of interesting layer, unusually, the international side seems to be going better. So by the time he gets to the mid 60s, he can walk through the corridors of the UN. And there are literally dozens of new states represented there in the, in the form of ambassadors and diplomats, he can see the fruits of his labor. Whereas at home, he's very troubled. You know, when Watsa, robs, which is essentially where he grew up, he's very upset about it. So you know, he sees these things really concerned about segregation, continuing segregation, or even intensifying segregation. So he's sort of very frustrated, and he feels like he needs to get back into the game. Unfortunately, he dies so young, that he can only do so much. But that is definitely a kind of struggle he has.
Anna Spain Bradley 37:11
So we are going to conclude with a final bringing it home. And we at UCLA and in Los Angeles like to think that there are special things that happen here with the people here to afford innovation, excellence in many areas, and a true push towards what Ralph dedicated his life to a shared sense of shared humanity. What advice would you think Ralph Bunche would give to current Bruins who are looking for optimism? He described himself as an incurable optimist. It's a tough time, and we've been having been there before. And sometimes we need somebody like Ralph Bunche, to look at and say, Alright, we can go, we can go into the future, what message would you share on his behalf with ruins?
Kal Raustiala 38:01
Interesting. I mean, I think there's two things that he said pretty frequently. And one was he was he was definitely an optimist. And he definitely believed that at some point, somebody asked him about, you know, how do you succeed as a mediator, this was after he wins a Nobel Prize, he comes back from Palestine. And, you know, he said something like, you pitch and then you pitch somewhere and you keep pitching, basically, you don't give up. So a huge part of his his belief system was you keep at it, you work hard, and he was an incredibly hardworking person. So he would definitely give that form of advice. And I think if he were here, he would offer that up. The other thing that he gave throughout his career was, and you know, this is dear to my heart about what yours is be more international. He really felt that people often were very parochial in the way they looked at the world, they looked at their, you know, little slice of it, and that you needed to see the bigger picture. And you needed to think about global dimensions to things. And so he was always pushing people from, even from his college years onward, to take a global perspective. So I'm sure he would reiterate that if you were here today.
Anna Spain Bradley 39:01
Thank you. So I would love for you all, just to join me in congratulating Cal. He's dedicated three years and more to this. And because of that, we get to learn a new about a bunch. So thank you.
Stephen Gardbaum 39:17
Thanks. Well, really fascinating conversation. We have about 17 minutes for questions. And I want to remind our online audience that you can submit questions on the Question and Answer function on Zoom. So does anyone have a question? Yes.
Audience Question 39:37
Thanks for the talk. I'm wondering if you could explain a little bit more mentioned the importance of international work, as well as Ralph's return toward the civil rights movement. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how he brought his biggest work with decolonization and work as a mediator into like more specifically.
Kal Raustiala 40:03
Yeah, so in the early career, so Howard years and so forth, he was someone who, as I mentioned, was involved in the formation of various organizations. And because the civil rights movement, and I don't think that phrase was actually used that frequently back then, but what we would associate with it had a more internationalist bent. And there's a great book by Carol Anderson that talks about this kind of change away from kind of a more internationalist to more nationalist view, he, he saw these things is pretty closely linked. And he both worked in terms of organizations like the NNC. But he also worked on scholarship that was directly related. So he was kind of combining different things. That made sense as a professor, when he enters government, that all kind of goes away for a while, they talked about and then it re emerges at the end. And when it re emerges at the end of his career, I don't want to suggest it totally goes away, because he does maintain a role, for example, with NAACP, but when it comes back into kind of focus for him at the end, I think a lot of what he brings to bear, to be honest, is His Eminence, his gravitas, the sense that he was someone who had respect amongst the kind of mainstream of American life. And that was really important, and especially establishment America. So remember, this is the Cold War, there's still a foreign policy as a huge part of political life in this country at that time. And he's someone who's at the very top. And so I think, for example, from Martin Luther King, I think King saw that as something that was valuable, that that he could bring the kind of the respect, the eminence, the gravitas was all very powerful. What Munch actually said, wasn't that different than what King said in many instances, so it wasn't saying something wildly different. But he brought a certain kind of perspective. And I think he would often give speeches that would chastise white America but in a gentle way that I think he Ralph Bunche thought was easier to swallow, than maybe certainly someone like Malcolm X was much more frontal. So that's a little bit vague. But I think that's what he really ends up doing. And, you know, it's something that he really believed it and he was very happy to be doing it. And I think honestly wished he could have done more. But he was so consumed by these other issues, there was no bandwidth.
Audience Question 42:38
What do you hope the impact of this book will be?
Kal Raustiala 42:42
Well, I got interested in it, because I didn't know enough about him. And you know, I think just kind of having taught at UCLA for a long time. A lot of people know that we had bunch Hall, and they may have like, waited for the elevator and looked at that bus. And kind of, like, Oh, here's this guy, he was Undersecretary General, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, he obviously went to UCLA, that bus doesn't even really look like. But that's all they know. And if that's true here at UCLA, that students in my experience, undergrads in particular, really don't know who Ralph Bunche was, that's certainly true of most people. And in my experience, writing this book, and in some ways, I've been working on this idea for, you know, I don't know, maybe even six, seven years, you know, people of a certain generation, you know, if you're in your late 70s 80s, something like that, you remember Ralph Bunche, but a lot of other people just simply do not know who he is. And he's such an important figure, such an interesting figure, and had such such a big impact on so many things that really matter that I felt like he needed to be kind of brought back into the conversation. And so that's a, that's a real goal of the book is to kind of bring him back. But it's also a chance to talk about things he cared about the United Nations decolonization, these other themes, which we do talk about, but we don't always recognize his agency in it. So those are my goals.
Audience Question 44:13
Yes. Standard question, but you're familiar with the literature about him.
Kal Raustiala 44:21
Yeah.
Audience Question 44:21
What did you find? That was surprising? Positive and negative.
Kal Raustiala 44:30
In that literature, or kind of contrary to tha? What did I find?
Yeah, good question. So yeah, there's there's a fair bit of writing about him. The last kind of major biography, there was a kind of unusual biography that came out in 1999. And then 1993. So it's been a while. But all of that work, I think, didn't I don't know if it's something I've heard about him. But this is just maybe reiterating a point that Ralph the third made. What that work didn't see, I think was the connections in his career in his work, the ways that his time as a scholar, his time as a State Department official, his time as a UN diplomat, his work as civil rights figure, that they all had linkages. And it's specifically with regard to the United Nations the way that both peacekeeping and mediation were integral to this process of decolonization that he cared so much about. So that kind of came out. I think that's the biggest contribution. You know, there are, of course, little facts here and there about him things about him, but I think the previous work had gotten to him as a person pretty well. I think what maybe it did less well, or at least what I added, I hope, is how he fit into broader themes in the post war order, how he helped create that order, and how he helped make the United Nations what it was, at that time. And what it is, in fact, today that, that the the UN had an initial vision, it ended up being something quite different. And he has a really big hand in that. So I think it's more of a synoptic issue.
Stephen Gardbaum 46:10
Do we have any more online questions?
Jessica Peake 46:12
Yeah. Let's see if I can combine a few together. So there's a there's a group of questions asking about what were some of the very specific skills and talents that that made him such an effective negotiator? And how did his background contribute to his understanding of human behavior that made it great?
Kal Raustiala 46:30
So in terms of his skills as a mediator, and negotiator, he was, first of all, very charming, by all accounts, kind of a, you know, a person that people liked and trusted. And he leveraged that. So in his famous mediation on the island of Rhodes, where he kind of serially met with Israel and Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, Israel and Syria, Israel and Lebanon, though he didn't do the last two directly, personally in the same way. He is very skillful at- he was a really good pool player. So he played a lot of pool when he was at UCLA when he was in high school. And so he would shoot pool with, you know, the Arabs and the Israelis till like midnight, and then have a few drinks. And then when they kind of think like the nights over, he'd say, okay, now we're gonna get down to cases. And we're going to talk about whatever, the Negev Desert. And so he would use the social context to kind of loosen people up. But then he was also very good at using formal elements. So he would toggle between the informal and the formal. So he then the next morning, or maybe it was like noon, he would get them around a table, and he would have a gavel, and they'd all be in suits and ties and it'd be very serious. And so, and he had techniques, he had something called the Rhodes formula where he was like a kind of intermediary. It's a little bit complicated. But I'll just note, as an aside, that his techniques, there's a kind of interesting vignette about the way it was eventually applied to what was known as the Watts gang truce here in Los Angeles in the 90s. And that his techniques were used, and kind of adopted in that too. So he had a number of different personal elements, personal qualities, and techniques that made him really effective. So but I think the number one thing is people trusted him. They seem to really believe that he would work in their interests. And then maybe In addition, maybe equally important, he was a super skilled draftsman. And so he could many people know that this including at state, when he was in the federal government, that he was very good at taking what diplomats we call bracketed text, and finding some clever location that would bridge the brackets that indicated disagreement and find language everybody could work with. That's a really important skill. And it's a skill for a treaty writer. But it also can be a skill in kind of more informal forms. So he was just very, very good at that. So I think those different things really made him kind of the best mediator of the postwar here.
Audience Question 49:13
What might you have to say about some of the current conflicts or what we have to say about what has been the neoliberal neocolonialism taking place in the continent of Africa today, that the great powers were scrambling for resources?
Kal Raustiala 49:32
Yeah, this is an interesting issue. So even during his lifetime, he does a 1971. You know, a lot of kind of formal political decolonization has taken place by the time he's nearing the end of his life, even by, you know, the early 60s, much of Africa most of Africa has become independent. So, in a sense, his dream, his desire for the end of Empire has occurred, but pretty quickly, there's a focus on well, that's not enough. What about the economic controls? What about what starts to be called the neocolonialism? What about what becomes the new international economic order effort of the 1970s, which he's not alive for. And I point out in the book that he is certainly aware of those things. And interestingly, when he's at Howard as a scholar, he's kind of writing often in a Marxist kind of mode, which to be fair was pretty common back then. But that sort of falls out of his thinking. And so he's not particularly focused on those issues. And I think it's partly that he becomes the peacekeeping person, he becomes the mediator, he's drawn into security issues, rather than economic issues. So he tends not to think a lot about these more informal economic forms of control that the West continues to exert over Africa, though there are times when he can't avoid it. So for example, Congo, and Congo becomes independent, there's almost immediately a Civil War, in which the richest province, Katanga that has all of the virtually all of the valuable minerals breaks away, mostly supported by Belgium. And it's this big Cold War issue. But it's also very much about like the last stand of white supremacy in Africa, and bunches there on the ground. And he's deeply involved in all of that. So again, it's not like he doesn't see it. But I argue in the book that he's not that focused on it, and that he almost has a little bit of a blind spot for it. So it's a bit hard to say what he would think today, because he doesn't, he didn't have enough, I think enough focus on it even at the time. He just didn't talk about it very much. So it would be pure speculation, but I'm sure he wouldn't like it. But it just wasn't something that he particularly focused on. He was much more interested in the political, the diplomatic, the military, those kinds of things. You know, all of that said he was frustrated by getting Congo the way that Belgium was attempting to kind of keep your hands on the wheel, even as they were handing over supposedly handing over independence. And he saw that as a very cynical maneuver. So I think he would be equally, you know, disparaging towards what many Western powers did in the aftermath. And to some degree to continue to do today.
Audience Question 52:26
So he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 right, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize for work he did on his account. How did he view the development subsequent to that?
Kal Raustiala 52:41
Yeah, great questions. So he maintains an actions to the region throughout the rest of his career. And the Israelis in particular, liked him a lot. He was someone who they wanted to keep as mediator, and they want to keep as mediator and future instances, after the Suez Crisis in 1956-57. When the UN stands up, what's the first sort of major peacekeeping force, which he is sort of directly putting together, he's dealing with the Israelis all the time, as well as the Egyptians and, and others. So he keeps his kind of fingers in their region, though he doesn't really like it. He wants to get out all the time. And he's kind of sucked back in. But he was troubled by what he called the refugee problem, what we would today think of as the problem of Palestinian nationalism, and, and so, you know, he knew from the beginning, that there was this problem, and there were these refugees, and they needed somewhere to go. And Gaza itself was an issue, even in the 40s. And certainly in the 50s. So when the Suez Crisis is happening, a big part of it surrounding Gaza, about Gaza, who's governing Gaza, how's Gaza being controlled, is the UN in charge of Gaza, etc. So he sees all of this at one point, he goes there, this is a few years later, maybe like 1960, or something. And he comes back and he says, You know, I talked to this farmer, who was like a Palestinian farmer. And he talked to he told me how he bring his kids right up to the line of Israel to look into Israel and say, that's our land. You know, you can't go there, but that's our land. And that he bunch saw this as an example that the moment you take the troops away, the problem is going to reemerge, that there's no actual solution that's been imposed or achieved, that it's simply a bandaid on the peacekeepers. The international community's efforts are simply a band aid. So he saw that and didn't didn't like it. So I think if you were here today, he would be really troubled by what's going on in Israel today. But he was already troubled by the situation and to be fair, he was pretty irritated with the Jordanians and Egyptians as well. He saw Are the Jordanians that selling out the Palestinians at every moment? So, you know, he was pretty tart and private in his private diary writings and he thought all of the players in the Middle East, were grandstander is liars, deceptive deviant, like he just got so frustrated with them. So. So I think he would, he would be very troubled. But also he kind of saw it coming. And he's, I think he would not not be totally surprised.
Stephen Gardbaum 55:30
Here we have time for one more quick question. Yes.
Audience Question 55:33
You talked about that his research was based in South Africa.
Kal Raustiala 55:39
He spent time in South Africa. When he was I mean, his his his research, his PhD research was in French, West Africa. But he did actually spend time in South Africa. There's a brief moment where he decides to become kind of versed in anthropology. And he goes to London School of Economics, he gets this two year leave and grants. I don't even understand how this works. But I guess things were easier back then, as a professor to get extensively even he takes off and he spends all this time traveling throughout Africa. That's later in the late 30s.
Audience Question 56:11
Because there is another anti colonial movement that really started in South Africa, as you may be aware of that was. And there is a plaque in Peterson, or some kind of South African station. It's actually attacked by the apartheid movement in 1892 started for that. Do you think he had any connection with Mahatma?
Kal Raustiala 56:31
I mean, he certainly was aware of Gandhi of course. And he had a lot of connections to high level Indian officials he worked closely with India is probably the most significant anti colonial player early on in the US history. So one of things I talked about in the book is that although bunch has a hand in and described the trusteeship system of creating the trusteeship process, which was a kind of updating on the mandate system, in fact, the General Assembly becomes the place where decolonization is really rhetorically attacked. And in some ways politically attacked in India is one of the chief proponents of that. So not Gandhi directly, but Gandhi's thinking is obviously kind of influencing some of that. So you know, and then of course, its relationship with king, King look to Gandhi. And at various points, King actually tries to get Indian officials to come to his non violence Institute, and he tries to get punched to help him. You know, can you talk to men on who's the Indian ambassador? Can you can you comment? None of it ever works. But so there's a lot of connections like that. As far as I know, they didn't meet, but I can't say for sur.,
Audience Question 57:41
Because you see that what happened was that King went to India, and he says that he's going to be near the pilgrimage. And he stayed in the place where Gandhi was actually living. And the press unfortunately, did not cover it as it should have at that particular point.
Kal Raustiala 57:59
I didn't know that.
Stephen Gardbaum 58:01
Okay, well, we're out of time. So thanks so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai