Ban Ki-moon and UNA USA MUN

    This picture, taken just a couple of hours ago, is of Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations.  He is in the General Assembly Hall, talking to 2000 teenagers.   These students have travelled from many U.S. states and from 17 countries to take part in a 3 day model United Nations conference.

     Ban Ki-moon is both relaxed and animated.  I think he likes young people.  He speculates that a future United Nations Secretary General might well be in the audience and he encourages all to consider a life of public service.

     Public service. In spite of what the skeptics think, it's a powerful idea that is still alive.

     Students from the audience ask him questions.  They are so earnest, so idealistic.  Some questions are undisguised challenges.  Ban Ki-moon is also earnest as he replies.  He is respectful of the idealism.  He is respectful of the challenges.   He tells the students that he can learn from them.  "So can the adult delegates who usually sit in these chairs," he says.  "They, too, have much to learn from your energy and enthusiasm."

     We were dismissed after Opening Ceremonies.  By luck, the discharge pattern put me out early.  I walked south on 1st Avenue past the whole United Nations complex.  Groups of lively students crowded the sidewalks.  There was a bench at 42nd Street.  I sat down.  It was twilight and a light rain had started.  Throngs of students moved past.  They looked particularly alert and happy.  Occasionally something would reveal a bit about a student's cultural identity - a group of laughing girls in kerchiefs, three boys running through an open space shouting out to each other in Italian,  a nun in habit with teenagers crowded against her sharing one umbrella. 

     Mostly though, differences were not apparent.  All those young people looked the same: bright and competent.

     Even the warmest supporter on the United Nations, like myself, recognizes serious flaws in the organization.

     But even the most cynical opponent of the U.N., had he sat listening in the General Assembly Hall this evening or watching on the park bench at 42nd and 1st a little later, even the most pessimistic could not have failed to recognize the hopeful promise of these laughing young people eager to carry our future.