United Nations and Stanford University

     U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was named Stanford's 2000 Commencement Speaker at the suggestion of students. He already spoke at the Notre Dame Commencement, where he sharply criticized the failure of the US to support the UN. Presumably his Stanford talk will follow the same lines.  He may be right, but he subject deserves serious discussion,. Nevertheless, despite my appeal,  there are no plans to debate his remarks. This is a serious omission, as is the lack of any regular courses at Stanford on the UN.
     I regularly receive two copies of certain UN documents. I forward one set to the Government Document division of Green Library, and I thought it would be appropriate to send the second set to the relevant member of the Political Science Department. The chairman of that department said he would inform me who the appropriate member would be, but I never received that information.
     The Spring-Summer issue of the excellent Stanford Journal of International Relations announces that its next issue will be devoted to "Transnational Organizations", including the UN. The journal is put out by the International Relations program, which, like the more specialized  International Policy Studies, is directed by Judith L. Goldstein of the Political Science Department. I hope someone from those programs will be covering Kofi Annan's speech. I plan to forward the second copy of the UN documents to Professor Goldstein. The Standord Review should also cover the event. This would be a critical analysis, not the formal coverage we can expect from the university's official Stanford Report.
     Whether you like the UN or not, and many Americans don't, it is a major player in today's world and deserves more methodical attention than it receives at Stanford University.

Ronald Hilton - 5/27/00