On Peace Capital: The Case of Academic Cultural Capital Inside the United Nations and its Universities

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) is often questioned about its ongoing involvement in matters of peace and security, but its involvement in higher education for peace in the 21st century is rarely examined. This paper investigates the use of higher education as a peacebuilding tool within the UN apparatus. First, I describe the work in which UN universities are engaged. Second, I examine the academic cultural capital that UN officials possess that enable their admission into the UN. I investigate this across UN agencies generally and then in regard to faculty specifically at one United Nations university. Third, I share commentary from scholars I interviewed at this university, and from scholars in Ethiopia and Somaliland, to corroborate and challenge the results of the qualifications review, and to elaborate on the education that the UN promotes. Data was analyzed through a Bourdieusian cultural capital framework. The findings point toward social reproduction through academic peace capital in the UN and its university.

Quantitatively comparing elite formation over a century: ministers and judges

“…Daly (1994) points to how, although there was continuity in the Irish civil service, the British practice of recruiting the upper echelons from particular universities was replaced by more internal promotion, resulting not only in a gradual change in elite civil servants but in a distancing of the Irish civil servants from Irish universities. The relevance of such questions continues as the subtleties of social reproduction are revealed, often as unintended side-effects of other policies (Kester, 2017). There were 199 cabinet ministers between 1922 and 2022.…”