Model UN Mania: Adventures in Global Diplomacy

As winter approaches, with the last of teenage boys’ shorts finally replaced by Adidas sweatpants and Mr. Feigin’s morning greetings featuring a coat, Trevor is a flurry of activity. Between academics and extracurriculars, students seem to be constantly running from classroom to classroom, always preparing for the next major event. Model UN is no exception.

Every Thursday, students file into a ninth-floor room and ready themselves for 50 minutes of global politics and extensive procedure. Model UN is, for all intents and purposes, roleplaying. It simulates meetings of different bodies of the United Nations with the goal of teaching students public speaking, international diplomacy, and political dealmaking. Each “committee”—the term for a collection of meetings—focuses on one topic, forcing students to take an incredibly in-depth look at a subject they might not otherwise explore. Trevor MUN is currently wrapping up a committee debating solutions to “state fragility,” a measure of how weak territorial control, state capacity, and state legitimacy lead to conflict and possible dissolution. At the time of writing, a dispute over incentivizing wealthy nations’ support of the Global South has yet to be solved.

For the last several weeks, once they enter the classroom, students have shed their identities and assumed those of delegates representing foreign nations. Delegates speak and take action only in ways that do not oppose their country’s current policies. The state fragility committee was a General Assembly, which functions like a typical United Nations meeting. Also occurring are Crisis Committees, separate entities entirely where students assume the roles of characters in search of power. Rumor has it that an intergalactic-themed crisis designed by MUN’s own Crisis Leader Darwin Greenfield is in the works.

Each year, Trevor Model UN builds up to a series of conferences. At conferences, students have an opportunity to display the skills they have been developing. Jeffrey Tam, an Upper School chemistry teacher, is the club’s main faculty advisor. “I started working with the Model UN club my second year, which was 25 years ago. It’s been a long ride.” But not everything has stayed the same: “Over my tenure, Trevor has attended conferences at Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard. We’ve always gone to Harvard.” This year, planned trips include Harvard Model UN and Future We Want Model UN, a lower-stakes local conference. For each conference, students are assigned a country to represent and a committee to attend.

This year, Trevor students will represent either Haiti or Kenya. Committees range from topics such as the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, focusing on the fentanyl crisis, to the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, focusing on satellite security. They then write a Position Paper outlining their country’s stance on the matter and conduct needed research. Come committee time, students must deliver speeches (during “moderated caucuses”), forge relationships with other delegates (during “unmoderated caucuses”), and draft resolutions over the course of several intensive sessions. Says Mr. Tam, “As an advisor, I love to see the students get so involved and excited; they can’t wait to tell me what they did in each session.”

Returning members cannot wait to go back to Harvard. As anticipation builds, the excitement is palpable. Ayaan S. ‘26, one of the club’s Co-Chairs, is proud of his academic progress: “Going to Harvard Model UN each year has really given me the opportunity to practice public speaking, which has transcended Model UN. HMUN has also given me a sense of how to navigate a larger group of students, which we’ll have to do a lot in college. I get to develop my voice in a much larger space than Trevor, and I’m sure this skill will stay with me through college and beyond. The social aspect of the conference is equally important to students; Isaac G. ‘26 simply states, “Last year, I had a lot of fun and got the chance to make friends from all sorts of countries and backgrounds.”