Teaching about the United Nations: Drawing on the Expertise of the UN Secretariat.

Many universities and colleges offer courses that deal one way or another with the United Nations--some focus exclusively on the Organization; others deal with it in the larger context of international organizations. In all of them, faculty members are concerned with teaching about the United Nations and aim to cover a broad range of topics, including the nature of the Organization and the functions of its major organs and bodies, its place in the larger realm of international relations and its major achievements and failings. Faculty and students involved in these courses can draw upon a very large and rich body of literature and documentation for teaching and research. It is much less common to find courses that draw on personnel directly involved in the work of the United Nations. Yet, this is one area where it has much to offer.

Indeed for almost thirty years, the Marquette University seminar at the United Nations has drawn upon the expertise of UN Secretariat staff, as well as diplomats, to learn about the world Organization. Hailed as a great success by participating students and dignitaries, it offers students an intensive two-week study programme at UN Headquarters in New York. During the first week, UN staff brief the group on their work in the various important areas the United Nations addresses, such as peacekeeping (and the more recent efforts at peacemaking and peace-building), disarmament and arms control, development, world health, food and population problems, human rights, refugees, international law and the environment. The financial situation and reform of the United Nations system, especially of the Security Council, are also addressed. These briefings have always provided ample opportunity for dialogue between students and Secretariat personnel. Rich in substance, they bring to life the materials that the students have already read and discussed as a group.

The briefings, readings and discussions during the first week of the programme provide the necessary background for a lively and intelligent dialogue with diplomats, which is the focus of the second week. The objective has always been to get briefings from a good cross-section of Member States, so that students hear different viewpoints on the many political, economic and social issues dealt with by the United Nations.

Larger UN missions sometimes host the briefing; many, in fact, are quite willing to do so, especially when the group consists of mature and serious students who have been well briefed beforehand. When specific important political issues or significant international disputes have occurred--e.g., apartheid prior to the 1990s, Iran and Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s, the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict in the Middle East--representatives of affected States or entities have been invited to engage in dialogue. For American students, a briefing from the United States Mission provides a good capstone at the end of the programme.

Experience with the seminar over time has led to the introduction of some significant innovations and improvements, perhaps the most important of which has been the addition of other institutional participants since the early 1990s. In 1992, collaboration with Dutch universities began, starting with a small group of students and a programme leader from the University of Utrecht, then the University of Groningen and now the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) of Amsterdam. In 1996, the collaboration was expanded to include St. Norbert College. This has made the seminar experience not only more interesting for students, since it makes for a more cosmopolitan student body, but it also has made the administration and organization of the seminar more manageable because each group leader can participate in its design and set-up.

The Marquette University seminar was developed to meet the specific needs and desires of the students enrolled in its political science and international affairs programmes, though students from other fields of study have been admitted if their own programme requirements are consistent with the seminar's objectives. While the Marquette seminar may serve as a model for others, it should be expected that the needs and expectations of different institutions would vary. Smaller colleges and universities, as well as certain foreign institutions, may have difficulty organizing programmes on their own, and might want to consider collaborative efforts, as initiated by the Marquette University seminar, with a great benefit to students and faculty alike. Whatever the need or choice, organizers will find the United Nations as an institution, and its personnel as individuals, as well as the diplomats, ready and willing to provide assistance.

Lawrence J. LeBlanc (far right, with Dr. Gratzia Villarroel and Dr. Frits-Joost Beekhoven van den Boezem) is professor of political science at Marquette University, USA. He is currently a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi, Malaysia. He has written on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and on the Genocide Convention.