Conor Cruise O’Brien

Conor Cruise O’Brien (born November 3, 1917, Dublin, Ireland—died December 18, 2008, Howth, near Dublin) was an Irish diplomat, politician, educator, and journalist who was one of Ireland’s most provocative political and intellectual figures. Although he was a fierce advocate of his homeland, O’Brien was a strong critic of Irish Republican Army violence and of what he considered the romanticized desire for reunification with Northern Ireland.

O’Brien attended a Roman Catholic grammar school and the predominantly Protestant Trinity College, Dublin (B.A., 1941; Ph.D., 1953) before joining the Irish diplomatic corps. His collection of essays Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (1952; written under the pseudonym Donat O’Donnell) impressed United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who in 1961 appointed him UN special representative in the Congo (later the Democratic Republic of the Congo). O’Brien ordered UN peacekeeping forces into the breakaway Katanga province, and the resulting scandal forced him out of office. Despite UN objections, he wrote To Katanga and Back (1963) to explain his actions.

After serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana (1962–65) and Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University (1965–69), O’Brien entered Irish politics. He held (1969–77) a Labour Party seat in the Dail (parliament) and then (1977–79) in the Senate, representing Trinity College, of which he was prochancellor (1973–2008). In 1979 he was named editor in chief of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, but he left after three tumultuous years. O’Brien remained an active newspaper columnist, especially for the Irish Independent (until 2007). His books include States of Ireland (1972) and On the Eve of the Millennium (1995), as well as perceptive studies of Charles Stewart Parnell, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson.