Model UN Programs
Do you like to discuss and debate international problems? Would you like to sharpen your analytical skills, make your writing more concise and precise, and acquire experience, confidence and skill in public speaking? Are you a ham looking for roles to play? Do you crave an opportunity to mix learning with social pleasure?
If your answer to any of the preceding questions is "yes," then you should consider joining Model UN.
What Is Model UN?
A model UN is a simulation of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Participants play the role of diplomats representing a country in debates and negotiations toward the drafting, amending and passage of resolutions stating global policy on the whole range of international problems facing humanity. By researching the problems and their country, students learn about the problems from the perspective of other people. By participating in the deliberations with students representing many countries, students learn about the diversity of national perspectives.
Participation in model UN has a number of benefits. Students who take it seriously learn a great deal about international affairs. They develop sophisticated library and internet research skills. They hone their analytical and critical thinking skills. They sharpen their writing. Many of our students who have gone on to graduate school, law school or a career in the Foreign Service have told us that model UN was among the best educational experiences of their years at DePaul.
You do not need to have prior model UN experience to join. The program develops the necessary skills in research, analysis, writing, speaking and negotiating skills used in model UN sessions.
Model UN at DePaul University
The model UN program at DePaul is run collaboratively by Dr. Patrick Callahan (Department of Political Science) and Dr. Alex Papadopoulos (Department of Geography) and the elected student leaders of the Students for International Affairs/Model UN Club.
During the school year the participants meet one evening every week to share and discuss research and to practice the writing, speaking, and parliamentary procedures skills. We also run one intra-mural simulation each quarter. The intra-mural simulations are held on a Saturday. Their agenda topic changes every term.
Students who show sufficient commitment and responsibility are invited to participate in the Midwest Model UN conference in St. Louis late February. There, DePaul students will represent Cameroon, Israel, and Italy on the various committees of the UN. Delegates from other colleges represent other countries. In the past, DePaul students have been very successful in such conferences, winning several awards for excellence.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences provides generous financial support Model UN activities .
Joining Model UN at DePaul
Students who want to participate in model UN activities should contact Dr. Callahan via email (so that he can add you to his email distribution list) at pcallaha@depaul.edu.
Researching United Nations topics
The first research tasks are to gain basic orientation on the agenda topics and the nation you will represent. Begin researching topics is by reading the relevant pages from A Global Agenda: Issues Before the United Nations *th General Assembly. (A new volume of this series is published every year. In each volume's title the asterisk is replaced by the number of the General Assembly of the previous year.) Each volume summarizes the UN's actions on all the issues before it for the previous year, thereby clarifying what agenda topics have meant in the UN context and the kinds of resolutions that might be proposed at UN conferences.
In researching your country, your goal is not to discover its exact position the every issue involved in your agenda topic. Very often your country will not have taken a position on the specific proposal presented in a draft resolution. Moreover, much of the work in model UN conferences involves amendments, which usually deal with quite specific questions of wording. Your goal, instead, is to take on the character of the country you are representing. This is done by becoming familiar with the country’s history (which tells you what have been its greatest problems in the past), its interests, and its basic foreign policy orientation (general policies, ideologies, and patterns of alignment and collaboration). Then, once you have taken on the personality and character of that country, you reason out the country’s most appropriate and likely reaction to the specific challenge or opportunity posed at the conference. This always involves extrapolation from the facts; it always is a creative process.