The United Nations Intellectual History Project and the Role of Ideas

The United Nations (UN), and in particular its Secretariat, does not have an in-house historical section which regularly publishes new works regarding the organization. This is in stark contrast with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has its own in-house historian in the person of James Boughton (2001). To compensate for this hiatus, the UN Intellectual History Project (UNIHP) was established in 1999 as an independent initiative by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies of the City University of New York (CUNY). Initiators and co-directors of this project are Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly and Thomas G. Weiss. The three made their names within the UN family and in the academic world.