My Keynote Address to UPMUNC XLVII in 2013

UPMUNC XLVII. That's the 47th annual meeting of the University of Pennsylvania Model United Nations Conference. UPMUNC is pronounced "UP-munk".

Out of the blue, a young woman graduate of the New England boarding school known as Andover invited me to deliver the Keynote Address at UPMUNC XLVII in November 2013. She had graduated from Andover earlier that year. I graduated in 1959. She was a Freshman at UPenn and was writing as a leader of the student team organizing UPMUNC XLVII. She found me, she wrote, in an alumni database.

Most readers probably know that there are Model UN clubs in many colleges and universities in the USA, as well as in high schools here and in universities in other countries. UPenn's annual conference is not the best known or the biggest, but it's BIG from my point of view. There were more than 1000 participants in the room when I spoke, they told me.

The theme of my address was growing up in crowded, wired world, awash in money. This is still the world that college students are living in today, except that it has become much more wired than I imagined because of Artificial Intelligence. It has also gotten much more uncertain and chaotic.

My address was intended to be provocative and I believe I succeeded. I finished with a provocative proposal to make the United Nations more relevant and effective: weighted voting in the General Assembly, weighted by population so that a country with 100 million citizens would have more votes than a country with 1 million citizens.

I'd like to know if you or agree with the provocative points made in this address. The best way to respond is by sending an email message to lexrieffel@gmail.com.

By the way, I was even paid $650 to reimburse my travel and hotel expenses, plus an honorarium. Another lifetime record.

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