RENOWNED AMERICAN PROFESSOR: “Serbian Students Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for Everything They Have Shown the World!”

Edward P. Joseph, a conflict expert and lecturer at the American university Johns Hopkins, believes that students from Serbia have proved that fundamental change can be achieved through nonviolent action and that they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

“The extraordinary discipline, hard work and organization demonstrated by Serbian students over two years of intense pressure deserve the Nobel Peace Prize,” Edward P. Joseph wrote in an analysis published in Foreign Policy magazine.

In his analysis, Joseph assessed that there is a sharp contrast between students in Serbia, who operated in a hostile environment, and their peers in France, who primarily “seek public attention,” and that this contrast “offers numerous lessons.”

He noted that the opposite scenario unfolded in Serbia compared to France, where student unrest had been present from the very beginning of the protests.

“Violence against peaceful students in Belgrade sparked a nationwide student movement. The key factor in winning support across the country, rather than fleeting media attention or opportunistic gatherings, was the students’ restraint in the spirit of Gandhi’s philosophy, even as the regime intensified provocations and attacks, particularly after the third mass protest in late June 2025,” Joseph believes.

He added that cooperation and collective decision-making, which were crucial to the success of the student movement, were encouraged by the determination to bring about change, rather than resentment or toxic rhetoric.

“Second, young people in Serbia focused their attention on society’s fundamental needs, rather than narrow, particular demands concerning only the cost or conditions of studying. Their willingness to make sacrifices, reflected in exhausting long-distance marches, marathon bicycle rides and lengthy, demanding meetings, instead of seeking instant gratification, is a defining feature of this successful movement,” the American professor wrote.

While young people in France “storm the Bastille,” Joseph writes in his analysis, Serbian students have “spread throughout the country, establishing civic groups in large cities and small villages, thereby rekindling ordinary people’s faith in participatory democracy.”

As the third lesson to be drawn from the Serbian students’ approach, Joseph cites the fact that their movement “did not dogmatically reject participation in the electoral process,” as many student activists around the world do: “For example, participants in the anti-corruption protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina a decade ago made precisely that mistake.”

Joseph states that, unlike many of their peers in the United States, students from Serbia understood that their lack of life experience was an obstacle to running for public office and managing state institutions.

“Instead, they turned to the public, allocating a proportional number of places for candidates to each faculty across the country. The candidates underwent rigorous background checks, detailed interviews and several rounds of selection. Only those who enjoyed a good reputation in their respective fields managed to meet the established criteria. One absolute criterion was decisive in the selection process: candidates could have absolutely no political affiliation or political background whatsoever,” Joseph writes in his analysis.

He added that the students had “shrewdly understood” that the Serbian opposition, “widely regarded by the public as ineffective,” would have no credibility whatsoever among voters.

“Now is the time for the United States and the European Union to advance political and economic relations, as well as people-to-people ties, between Serbia and its neighbors in the former Yugoslavia, in order to restore the trust lost over the years of Serbian revisionism under Aleksandar Vučić’s rule. With the European Union’s accommodating stance, as well as the administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Vučić’s Serbia has become the strongest foothold of Russian and Chinese influence in all of Europe, as well as the main source of division in the region,” Joseph believes.

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