2009 Nobel Peace Prize said, "As Americans, we're proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category". RNC chairman Michael Steele discussed his disapproval of the award in a fund-raising letter, writing, "the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control." In 2015, Geir Lundestad, the non-voting Director of the Nobel Institute and secretary for the Nobel Committee at the time of the award, published a memoir, "Secretary of Peace". In it, he wrote "In hindsight, we could say that the argument of giving Obama a helping hand was only partially correct.
2003 Nobel Peace Prize change. Her husband, Javad Tavassolian, was an advisor to President Khatami. The decision of the Nobel committee surprised some observers worldwide. Pope John Paul II had been predicted to win the Peace Prize amid speculation that he was nearing death. Some observers viewed Ebadi's selection as a calculated and political one along the lines of the selection of Lech Wałęsa and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others, for the award. Furthermore, they suggested that Ebadi's activities were not directly related to the goals of the prize as originally expressed by Alfred Nobel. She presented a book entitled "Democracy, human rights, and Islam