In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize today, President Obama must walk a tightrope between honoring his policy of seeking a dialogue with repressive regimes and trumpeting the ideals of freedom embodied by such past Nobel laureates as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

Clearly, the acceptance speech is an occasion to speak out forcefully for human rights. Obama could emulate the Dalai Lama, who accepted his 1989 prize on behalf of Mahatma Gandhi, who never won it. The American president would be following a similar path if he dedicated his award to one of the only laureates to be unable to accept the peace prize: Burma’s nonviolent champion of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest by a military dictatorship for 14 of the past 20 years. That would be a gesture millions of people would appreciate – not only in Burma, but in every place where despotic regimes repress dissent by imprisoning large swaths of their populations.