Fordham’s Model United Nations (MUN) team recently attended a conference at the University of Pennsylvania for a Model United Nations conference in which 50% of the team and delegates walked away with awards and recognitions for their work at the conference while representing Fordham.
Winning awards for outstanding delegates (four in total), verbal commendation (three in total) and honorable mention, this marks the club’s best performance to date.
Adil Kadirov, GSB ’26, the club’s president, spoke to the Ram on their recent win. He said the conference “was an arena where the best of the best in Model United Nations come to showcase their diplomatic acumen.”
Kadirov said, “Fordham’s performance at the conference was nothing short of historic. With a mix of seasoned and new members, our delegation emerged triumphantly, securing eight awards out of the 16 delegates we sent. This marks our best performance to date, a testament to the dedication and skill of our team.” With the e-board for Model UN being majorly new as of late, with this being the first semester that now-President Kadirov and now-Vice President Lucas Hjertberg, have led their team to victory, they said they hope to look to future conferences for more awards and recognitions. Currently, the club’s sights are on track to become a top 25, even 20, team this year in the nation.
Kadirov added, “Our success is built on a rigorous training regimen by Sarah Hurd and Luke Hyland. We meet thrice weekly, fostering a competitive spirit and striving for continuous improvement at each conference. Our goal is not just to compete but to set a new standard for excellence and place Fordham on the MUN map. We also have excellent planning and communications spearheaded by Emma Adgie and Luke Walsh.”
Crediting the club’s camaraderie and intellectual rigor, former President of Fordham’s Model UN team, Alexander Yankovsky, FCRH ’24, spoke to the Ram, saying, “Even before my own presidency of the club, we had to work to succeed on the front of institutional knowledge. Because our team was previously smaller, especially last year, our delegates had opportunities to increase experience and knowledge and it succeeded as seen this year.”
Yankovsky said, “We were ranked top 50 in the country last year, with the fact that we had people who were never involved in MUN before. Regardless, last year, we won awards at every single conference we attended as well.” He also said, “Attendance is up, growth is up, and there are more opportunities and increased competition when we go to conferences.”
Crediting the club’s successes from the past few years of pre-COVID-19 growth, Kadirov also added: “This win has placed Fordham in the spotlight of the MUN circuit. Our showing in the United Nations Security Council committee (the most rigorous committee in MUN) — where we faced off against the best/head delegates from other leading universities and secured second place — has not only outshone Harvard but also set us just behind Georgetown. This is a significant stride forward for our club, and as we gear up for an unprecedented six conferences next semester, our ambitions are set higher than ever.”
