An Introduction to the United Nations Intellectual History Project
by Louis Emmerij
First published in 2005 this article briefly explains the United Nations Intellectual History Project which involved documenting the history of ideas at the UN through archival work and oral history.
The project took a broad approach to ideas looking to “explain the origins of ideas; trace their trajectories within the institutions, scholarship, or discourse; and, in some cases, certainly in ours, evaluate the impact of ideas on policy and action.” I find this great because what they have done is explore the process of ideas instead of just the final idea. In this project they put value on process because as they say “ideas are rarely totally new. They do not come out of the blue.”
Absolutely 10 out of out 10 on the project front however this project, like many, stumbles over the archive. The UN archives sound like a total mess which is not surprising but simultaneously terrifying. And considering they claimed this project to be about “forward-looking history” their outputs were a series of books and 75 oral history testimonies which are meant to be found at www.unhistory.org (which as you might have guessed does not work).