died Dec. 9, 1971, New York, N.Y. U.S. diplomat, a key member of
the United Nations for more than two decades, and winner of the
1950 Nobel Prize for Peace for his successful negotiation of an
Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine the previous year. Bunche worked
his way through the University of California at Los Angeles and
graduated in 1927. He also earned graduate degrees in government
and international relations at Harvard University (1928, 1934)
and studied in England and South Africa. In 1928 he joined the
faculty of Howard University, Washington, D.C., where he set up
a department of political science. Meanwhile, he traveled
through French West Africa on a Rosenwald field fellowship,
studying the administration of French Togoland, a mandated area,
and Dahomey, a colony. He later did postdoctoral research at
Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and at the London
School of Economics before returning to Africa for further
studies in colonial policy. Between 1938 and 1940 he
collaborated with Gunnar Myrdal,