In this desert country, the vice president of the United States may well be an Egyptian.
At a Model United Nations conference hosted by the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar last week, students from the Middle East and beyond undertook the challenge of addressing issues ranging from Iraqi reconstruction to U.N. Security Council reform.
Participants assumed the roles of high-ranking officials worldwide, positions that often required them to negotiate from viewpoints other than their own.
SFS-Q Student Affairs Officer Gregg Deehan (SFS ‘04), who helped organize the events, said he made sure that no student represented his or her own country.
“These issues get really passionate here,” he said. “We didn’t want any students to fall back on the passion argument.”
SFS Dean Robert Gallucci, who sat in on some of the proceedings, said he was impressed by the level of commitment the students showed toward their adopted nationalities.
“Many of these kids are going to become very important in their countries one day,” he said. “If we do anything out there, we want to teach them to appreciate the value of negotiations.”
The two-day conference drew participants from all but one of the universities in Qatar’s Education City, as well as several outside of it. Education City is a community in the Qatari city of Doha that that includes satellite campuses from five major American universities.
Ahmed Helal (SFS-Q ‘09), an Egyptian who acted as vice president on the U.S. National Security Council, admitted that staying in character was not always easy.
“It was quite challenging because a lot of times I completely disagreed with what I was saying,” he said. “This was the first time for me and everyone.”
Deehan said what transpired was an intellectual debate in which most delegates put aside their personal beliefs and engaged in their roles with accuracy and enthusiasm.
“I don’t think most students out here have general role-playing experience,” Deehan said. “Not all of them were used to that.”
At times, Gallucci said, the standards that the students set for accepting agreements with other parties were unrealistically high, and some M.U.N. delegates had trouble seeing past their nations’ immediate interests.
With the continued support of Georgetown’s foreign service program, however, Gallucci said he had no doubt that students in Qatar would soon overcome these problems.
