For the seventh time, CMC’s Model United Nations team has won the Best Small Delegation award at Harvard University’s annual WorldMUN conference, aka the “Olympics of Model U.N.”
Held this year in Lima, Peru, Harvard World Model United Nations (WorldMUN) is the most internationally diverse college-level Model U.N. conference, and the largest outside of the United States and Canada.
Competing against roughly 2,000 university students from more than 110 countries, not only did CMC’s team win the small delegation award, but four team members (including two of the team’s newest, Marco Cisneros-Farber ’29 and Lily Ye ’29) came home with Best Delegate awards.
As a whole, the team has proven skillful at substantive debate, powerfully performing throughout the year. They ranked as the third Best Large Delegation overall and as the No. 1 U.S.-based university at Harvard’s U.S. conference, boasted strong showings at the UC Berkeley and USC conferences, and now are looking forward to closing out the season at the upcoming University of Chicago and UCLA MUN conferences.
CMCMUN President Tom Inouye ’26, an International Relations major, emphasized that his goal for the year was to balance “the competitive aspect of the club with team culture, making sure that people on our team feel that outside of the competitions, there’s a reason that they’re on the MUN team. I’m happy to say that I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job balancing it. This year we recruited 12 incredible students who have just contributed so much, not only to the competition side, but who also are just so excited about being on the team.”
This year, under Inouye’s leadership, the team expanded their campus presence by teaching public speaking skills to Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies’ World Affairs Podcast fellows.
“People who come into CMC are super knowledgeable, and many of them are already good public speakers,” Inouye explained. “But to be a good podcaster, it’s important that you work with good cadence and that you know how to approach topics with sensitivity. We collaborated with The Open Academy, and our Director of Outreach, Louis Layman ’26, and Training Managers, Enya Kamadolli ’26 and Yui Kurosawa ’26, hosted a public speaking workshop.”
Inouye also noted that CMCMUN expands its impact on campus by hosting high schoolers from across the region at the student-run club’s annual McKennaMUN conference. Held April 11-12, this year’s iteration will be “one of the largest in CMC’s recent history,” Inouye said. “With nearly 250 total competitors (and more registering by the day), topics will range from the Louvre heist to missile regulation to responding to neurodegenerative diseases.”
The team is also grateful for the essential support of President Hiram Chodosh, who has worked “so hard to get us the funding that we need to continue to be a top-five competitive team,” Inouye said. “He is always inquisitive about the ways that he can help, and the ways that we can increase our presence across campus to distill the values and information and skills that we have built as competitors into other people who are not on the team.”