The Beirut campus is abuzz as “Global Classrooms/LAU Model UN” returns in fall 2006, following last year’s inaugural UN simulation event that drew praise from high school students, teachers and principals.

Through April 2007, LAU students are training up to 700 high school students on writing position papers, negotiating with others, addressing committees through speeches and caucuses, and navigating the United Nations’s rules of procedure.

The activity will conclude with a conference simulating a UN assembly in which high school delegates representing different countries in various committees will issue a resolution considering the interests of all parties.

Students have launched a website as well as a newspaper—The Young Diplomat—and the event is being widely publicized on campus.

The event is conducted by LAU students and faculty members under Guidance Director Elie Samia’s supervision. Dr. Samia believes this activity is a building block towards achieving prosperity in Lebanon and restoring hope among young generations.

At the inauguration on December 9, 2006, LAU President Joseph Jabbra reflected on the mixed effects of globalization. “The more educated and technologically advanced we are, the more violent and less tolerant we seem to become,” Dr. Jabbra said. “There must be a peaceful alternative that gives our youth hope for a better world,” he added.

The program is sponsored internationally by Merrill Lynch, and locally by Bank of Beirut and Arab Countries (BBAC). Makram Zaccour, Merrill Lynch’s Middle East Chairman, and Ghassan Assaf, BBAC Chairman and General Manager, spoke at the inauguration ceremony.