Johan Galtung, an international researcher and public intellectual, passed away on 17 February at 93. He was an innovative scholar, an academic entrepreneur, and a lecturer world-wide.
He was born in Oslo on 24 October 1930. 15 years later, this date would see the founding of the United Nations. There is something symbolic about having the same birthday as the UN. As a researcher, Galtung’s orientation was unusually international. An excellent linguist, he was well-travelled and made his home in several countries.
He was a person of exceptional energy. Following a double high-school degree, he completed two MA degrees (in statistics and sociology) and went on to hold professorships in several fields and in many countries. In his younger years, he signed a pledge not to take the old Norwegian doctoral degree, but he came to hold honorary doctorates from a range of universities. After establishing what would become the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1959, he founded the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. Neither of these would have become what they are today without the impetus that Galtung gave them in their early years. He also played a crucial role in nurturing young aspiring peace researchers in the other Nordic countries. In 1969, he became the first Professor of Conflict and Peace Research at the University of Oslo. While this was not a personal chair, it would never have been established if Galtung’s supporters at the University and in political circles had not known that there would be at least one committed and competent applicant. At the time, the establishment of a new Norwegian University chair had to be approved by Parliament. Galtung was not yet 40 when he was appointed, but in a sense, it was already too late. Sabbaticals and leaves of absence abroad became more frequent and lengthier, and in 1978 he resigned—explaining his decision with reference to the spirit of the 1968 student protests: no one should hold a professorship for more than 10 years. Now came teaching positions in many other countries, including political science at the University of Hawaii for over a decade. He also taught methodology in the Sociology department at Columbia University for a few years around 1960, invited by Paul Lazarsfeld, and international relations at Princeton in the mid-1980s, in addition to guest professorships at a large number of universities world-wide.
Galtung’s first projects at PRIO resulted in a series of articles in Journal of Peace Research. They continue to be his most cited works and concerned topics such as structural violence, concepts of peace, international news dissemination, imperialism, international diplomacy, and the role of summits in international relations. Together with philosopher Arne Næss, he was also a pioneer of efforts to codify Gandhi’s ideas about non-violence and conflict management.
After Galtung left PRIO and moved to the University of Oslo and later to his international career, he also reoriented his scholarship in many ways. He became less interested in the pursuit of statistical regularities and developed instead a program for overcoming invariances. His public remarks became more acerbic and polemical, gaining him many critics. He never had problems attracting students and collaborators, but many of us, his students from his years of scholarly entrepreneurship in Scandinavia, found it difficult to follow him in his new orientation. As a scholarly field, peace research became more accepted, and as some would argue, more conventional. Johan could be extremely critical, suggesting, for example, that PRIO should change its name to something like the Norwegian Institute for Security Research. It was with a certain sense of unease that some of us opened his autobiography, Johan uten land (John Lackland), which was published on his 70th birthday, and then 10 years later, his Launching Peace Studies: The First PRIO Years. But in both these books he showered compliments on his colleagues from the pioneer years.
Galtung was bold in advancing concrete predictions about the world’s future. In many ways, this was a strength, especially in comparison with the cautious and wise-with-hindsight remarks to which social scientists are often prone. While he was not always equally adept at admitting error, he had no lack of critics who were happy to point out his errors for him. For a researcher, a measure of obstinacy can be a strength, particularly when things get difficult. Progress in research is often achieved through a dialogue between the bold voices and their critics, between the enthusiast and the sceptic, as Johan himself put it in an essay from 1960.
When PRIO—long after Galtung’s time—became the first institution to be designated a Centre of Excellence in the social sciences by the Research Council of Norway, this represented a recognition of what Galtung had started, even though he himself had pursued other paths.
For those of us who were young in the 1960s and entered the social sciences, and especially peace research, Johan Galtung was an unusually inspiring mentor. He was generous with his time and supplied endless scholarly guidance and encouragement. When something did not go well, he would take the time to explain why. Those of us who could not always follow him on his complex path, are nevertheless eternally grateful for having enjoyed such help and support as we entered the world of research.
A shorter version was first published on PRIO News on the death of his passing.
