Johan Galtung

At 93 years old, Johan Galtung physical status not available right now. We will update Johan Galtung's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Upon receiving his mag. art. degree, Galtung moved to Columbia University, in New York City, where he taught for five semesters as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. In 1959, Galtung returned to Oslo, where he founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He was the institute's director until 1969.

In 1964, Galtung led PRIO to establish the first academic journal devoted to Peace Studies: the Journal of Peace Research. In the same year, he assisted in the founding of the International Peace Research Association. In 1969, he left PRIO for a position as professor of peace and conflict research at the University of Oslo, a position he held until 1978.

He was the director general of the International University Centre in Dubrovnik and helped to found and lead the World Future Studies Federation. He has held visiting positions at other universities, including Santiago, Chile, the United Nations University in Geneva, and at Columbia, Princeton and the University of Hawaii. In 2014, he was appointed as the first Tun Mahathir Professor of Global Peace at the International Islamic University Malaysia.

Economist and fellow peace researcher Kenneth Boulding has said of Galtung that his "output is so large and so varied that it is hard to believe that it comes from a human". He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

In 1993, he co-founded TRANSCEND: A Peace Development Environment Network. In 1987, he was given the Right Livelihood Award.

Galtung first conceptualized peacebuilding by calling for systems that would create sustainable peace. The peacebuilding structures needed to address the root causes of conflict and support local capacity for peace management and conflict resolution. Galtung has held several significant positions in international research councils and has been an advisor to several international organisations. Since 2004, he has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Committee for a Democratic UN.

Galtung is strongly associated with the following concepts:

In 1973, Galtung criticised the "structural fascism" of the US and other Western countries that make war to secure materials and markets, stating: "Such an economic system is called capitalism, and when it's spread in this way to other countries it's called imperialism", and praised Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1972 for "break[ing] free of imperialism's iron grip". Galtung has stated that the US is a "killer country" guilty of "neo-fascist state terrorism" and compared the US to Nazi Germany for bombing Kosovo during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

In an article published in 2004, Galtung predicted that the US empire will "decline and fall" by 2020. He expanded on this hypothesis in his 2009 book titled The Fall of the US Empire - and Then What? Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming?.

During his career, Galtung statements and views have drawn criticism including his criticism of Western countries during and after the Cold War and what his critics perceived as a positive attitude to the Soviet Union, Cuba and Communist China. A 2007 article by Bruce Bawer published by the City Journal magazine and a subsequent article in February 2009 by Barbara Kay in the National Post criticised Galtung's opinion of China during the rule of Mao Zedong. China, according to Galtung, was "repressive in a certain liberal sense", but he insisted "the whole theory about what an 'open society' is must be rewritten, probably also the theory of 'democracy'—and it will take a long time before the West will be willing to view China as a master teacher in such subjects." Calling Galtung a "lifelong enemy of freedom", Bawer said Galtung discouraged Hungarian resistance against the Soviet invasion in 1956, and criticized his description in 1974 of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov as "persecuted elite personages".

Galtung has recommended that people should read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. In defending his claims that Jews control American media companies, Galtung cited an article published by National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi organization. Galtung's rhetoric has been criticized by Terje Emberland, a historian at the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, and Øystein Sørensen, a University of Oslo historian known for his scholarship on conspiracy theories. Asked by NRK about his controversial remarks, Galtung reiterated his recommendation that people should read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Galtung rejects that he is anti-Semitic.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz accused Galtung in May 2012 of antisemitism for (1) suggesting the possibility of a link between the 2011 Norway attacks and Israel's intelligence agency Mossad; (2) maintaining that "six Jewish companies" control 96% of world media; (3) identifying what he contends are ironic similarities between the banking firm Goldman Sachs and the conspiratorial antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and (4) theorizing, although not justified, antisemitism in post–World War I Germany was a predictable consequence of German Jews holding influential positions. As a result of such statements, TRANSCEND International, an organisation co-founded by Galtung, released a statement in May 2012 attempting to clarify his opinions. On August 8, 2012, the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland announced it was suspending Galtung from its organization, citing what it posited were his "reckless and offensive statements to questions that are specifically sensitive for Jews." Galtung said the claims were "smearing and libel",

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• Dr honoris causa, University of Tampere, 1975, peace studies
• Dr honoris causa, University of Cluj, 1976, future studies
• Dr honoris causa, Uppsala University, 1987, Faculty of Social Sciences
• Dr honoris causa, Soka University, Tokyo, 1990, peace/buddhism
• Dr honoris causa, University of Osnabrück, 1995, peace studies
• Dr honoris causa, University of Torino, 1998, sociology of law
• Dr honoris causa, FernUniversität Hagen, 2000, philosophy
• Dr honoris causa, University of Alicante, 2002, sociology
• Dr honoris causa, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2006, law
• Dr honoris causa, Complutense University, Madrid, 2017, politics and sociology
• Honorary Professor, University of Alicante, Alicante, 1981
• Honorary Professor, Free University of Berlin, 1984–1993
• Honorary Professor, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 1986
• Honorary Professor, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, 1993
• Distinguished Professor of Peace Studies, University of Hawaii, 1993-
• John Perkins University Distinguished Visiting Professor, 2005-
• Right Livelihood Award, 1987
• First recipient of the Humanist Prize of the Norwegian Humanist Association, 1988
• Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values, 1993
• Brage Prize, 2000
• First Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award, 2001
• Honorary Prize of the Norwegian Sociological Association, 2001
• Premio Hidalgo, Madrid, 2005
• Augsburg Golden Book of Peace, 2006
• Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
• Honorary member of the Green Party, 2009
• Erik Bye Memorial Prize, 2011