Summer program teaches diplomacy

An educational institute is looking for 80 students to go to The Hague next year for the conference. Representatives from a program designed to teach diplomacy and communication skills to 80 students from around the world came to Penn yesterday to talk to students about their workshop next summer in the Netherlands. The delegates will meet at the fourth annual International Student Symposium on Negotiation and Conflict to discuss a host of pressing international issues. "[The program] provides students with a head start in their careers," said Cody Shearer, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution, which is organizing the conference. Shearer added that students interested in international relations, as well as business or even medicine, should find the program worthwhile. Shearer, as well as former program participant Andrew Fleming, spoke yesterday to about 30 Penn students about the program in Stiteler Hall's undergraduate lounge. The symposium begins on July 19 in The Hague -- a center of international justice which has been the site of many important international criminal trials, such as those for several Serbians accused of committing war crimes during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia -- before moving on to Rotterdam's Erasmus University, the host institution. The goal of the symposium is to teach strategic negotiation tactics and communication skills through simulations, workshops and field trips to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal. "I learned that listening is so much more important than speaking," said Fleming, a 1998 Northwestern University graduate who participated in the program last summer. "I learned invaluable lessons that you can't possibly pick up in a book or in a lecture. [The program] changed my mentality." Previous lecturers have included Lord David Owen, former foreign minister of the United Kingdom and the United Nations-appointed mediator in the Balkans; former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim; and former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart. On weekends, students will have time to engage in social activities around The Hague and spend time in the heart of the city. Participants will also travel to other European cities, including London and Paris. Selection to the program is rigorous -- only 80 applicants out of a pool of nearly 800 students from 82 countries were admitted last year. According to Shearer, the participants are not only well-read and articulate but also "assertive, inquisitive [and] controversial." This year's sessions will include television and media training to help students become more adept at "speaking on their feet," Shearer said. The IIMCR intends to expand the program by organizing symposium sites in Argentina, South Africa, Singapore and the Middle East. This summer's symposium will run from July 19 to August 13. Students have the option of taking the course for academic credit through Erasmus University. For further information, students should visit the IIMCR homepage at http://www.iimcr.org or contact IIMCR via e-mail at iimcr@erols.com or by telephone at (202) 462-9544.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.