Winter 2003
Lehmann gives peace a chance
Growing up in a suburb of West Berlin, Ingrid Lehmann (M.A. '76, history) lived in a divided city in a postwar world seething with Cold War hostilities that might at any moment erupt into nuclear confrontation. "I always wished for a safer world," Lehmann says today. And as director of the United Nations Information Service in Vienna, she's working to make that wish come true.
Seeking a focus for her restless intelligence, Lehmann as a young student crisscrossed the Atlantic several times. In 1967, she first left home for California, where she studied political science and history at San Jose State College. Drawn to the growing anti-war movement, she began to explore the ideas and ideals that would shape her lifelong commitment to peace.
In 1968, at the height of the student protest movement, Lehmann returned home to the Freie Universitaet in Berlin, where the lure of political activism distracted her from her academic work. But in 1970, she returned to the United States to pursue "serious historical studies" as a graduate student at Duke University--only to return to Berlin a year later to finish her degree in political science. "At loose ends," she returned to the States yet again--this time, she says, headed "deliberately" toward a University with a strong history department, the University of Minnesota.
The German university system she left behind was rigidly structured and male-dominated, says Lehmann, despite reforms eliminating "some of the worst authoritarian excesses." At Minnesota, she found an environment more congenial to her high spirits and free-ranging intellect. "I felt freer to explore different avenues and pursue my research interests," she recalls. Her historical studies took her to the U's archives, where, she says, she drew not only on the extensive holdings, but also on the deep knowledge of some wonderful professors.
Before accepting her Vienna post in 1999, Lehman followed a worldwide career trajectory that took off in 1975, when she joined the U.N. Secretariat in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Her twelve jobs in "a line of postings around the world" have included a stint with the U.N. Force in Cyprus and positions in the Department of Disarmament Affairs and the U.N. Department of Public Information in New York. In her 25-plus years in international service, she has written several publications on peacekeeping, including the book Peacekeeping and Public Information--Caught in the Crossfire.
As director of the U.N. Information Service, Lehmann and her staff of 14 are responsible for communicating with the media and the public about the U.N.'s priorities, such as sustainable development and climate change. An unabashed U.N. loyalist, she says the organization is an "imperfect but vital tool of the international community that is becoming more pivotal as a result of globalization."
Noting the "difficult and tenuous" role of the U.N. vis-à-vis the United States, Lehmann says that while the U.N. is "a universal, democratic body of all states," the United States has tended to react unilaterally in pursuit of its own interests, especially since 9-11. In the U.S. view, September 11 caused an "international paradigm shift." In truth, she says, "The world always has been a very tense and dangerous place, and even a very severe tragedy is not a rare event--nor are outrages against human decency."
This "asymmetry of perceptions exacerbates U.S. relations with the rest of the world," says Lehmann, who believes the U.N.'s member states "have responded very well and with near-unanimity to the September 11 tragedy; the international coalition against terror found expression in the work of a Security Council committee that has made great strides."
A European citizen with deep ties to the United States, Lehmann is uneasy about the state of U.S.-European relations. "There is right now, over the Iraq issue, a gulf which I have never sensed before," she says. "The vantage points are very far apart. I think there are serious fault lines in the international environment that must be overcome peacefully, or we will all face a very difficult future."
Despite, or perhaps because of, these concerns, Lehmann remains unreservedly committed to the ideals that first moved her as a young woman: "Peacekeeping in its traditional consensual form is an activity close to my heart," she says, noting that the U.N., which pioneered international peacekeeping in the 50s, has a much better record than its critics are prepared to acknowledge. "The trouble is that the time must be ripe for peacekeeping to succeed," she says, adding that part of the U.N.'s job is to know when and how to begin the delicate process of negotiation and intervention.
Looking back over her career, says Lehman, "I have given the U.N. my best, and I am very proud of that."