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 Earlier this week, I argued that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to nobody, “as an acknowledgment that the most notable eruptions of violence have been so grimly predictable, the result of years of individual and collective failures by governments and international institutions.” Despite that sentiment, I certainly don’t object to the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s prize to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi for, as the announcement put it, “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” 
 
 Joshua Keating Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs. He’s known for mounting raids on factories employing children—sometimes facing down armed guards—as well as running a rehabilitation center for liberated children, organizing the Global March Against Child Labour, and setting up a certification system to ensure that carpets are made without child labor. My guess is that someone’s who’s comfortable telling the president of the United States to his face that his military policies are fueling terrorism isn’t going to let herself be reduced to a cuddly caricature. In its early years, the Nobel Peace Prize was most often given to honor a specific accomplishment in peacemaking—a treaty drafted or a conflict ended.
– While Slate's Joshua Keating argued previously that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to no one this year, he's not about to begrudge Malala Yousafzai, who was named a co-recipient today. The 17-year-old Pakistani activist is certainly worthy, he writes at the website. Just one thing, though: Can we please do away with the "irritatingly smug and condescending" coverage of her being "the bravest girl in the world," he asks. It's a disservice to her, and it belittles what she's up to these days. The good news is that the poise she has shown on the world stage, along with her willingness to challenge leaders including President Obama, suggests that she "isn’t going to let herself be reduced to a cuddly caricature." Which is the way it should be, observes Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. "It is past time to stop seeing Malala as simply the girl who survived, as a symbol," writes Davidson. "She is a girl who leads." Consider that death threats against the teen have not stopped, but nor have they silenced her. "The worst insult to Malala would be to regard her as nothing more than a child performer for peace, kept in a moment we want to keep hearing about." She became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize today, but it's as much about her future as her past. Click for Davidson's full post, or for Keating's full post.