Butler was also involved with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, serving as its president from 1925 to 1945. He used his friendship with many world leaders, including Pope Pius XI, in pursuit of peace and international cooperation, working to secure the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawing wars. For this work he received the Nobel Prize for peace, jointly with Jane Addams, in 1931.

Nicholas Murray Butler, as Robert A. McCaughey has stated in his 250th anniversary history Stand Columbia, "was the dominant personality in Columbia University's history in the first half of the twentieth century," serving as President from 1902 until 1945. He viewed the world, not merely Morningside Heights, as worthy of his attention and considered himself the last of America's "presidential" university presidents. Even though, according to then university archivist Milton Halsey Thomas, Butler spent the last two years of his life directing the selected pruning of his papers for posterity, they still amount to 600 boxes of material and 315 volumes of newspaper clippings.