The SCUSA conference made me realize just how provincial my view-point was. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where many of my friends were the children of diplomats and World Bank officials. At Harvard, too, most of the people I met despised isolationism. I had always considered U.S. involvement in world affairs to be a given; only the level of involvement remained to be determined.

But I was wrong. The other student participants were well-educated, and their reasons for distrusting the U.N. and other international organizations were at least as intellectually valid as the prevailing arguments for U.S. engagement abroad.

In addition, I realized that I didn't know much about the U.N. beyond what I read in the papers. I didn't know how much money the Administration owed the U.N. for unpaid dues. Professor Michael Glennon, an international law professor from UC-Davis who was one of our group moderators, mentioned this and other important facts while pointing out that the U.S., under international law, has a contractual obligation to pay its arrears. He noted that the U.S. will eventually lose its moral powers of persuasion if it fails to adhere to international laws.

Glennon also informed us that the U.N. charter provides for a supranational police force which would undertake peacekeeping missions. I had always assumed the isolationist fears of an international army that did not operate under U.S. supervision were paranoid fantasies, but I didn't know that such an army was, in fact, the brainchild and fondest hope of those who founded the U.N.

I had to stop and think about an army which claims to represent international interests. Who would decide what these interests were?

What if those commanding the army were not Americans, which seems fairly likely? Looking around at the West Point cadets, who might one day fight for the security of the United States, I realized the U.N. issue was much more complicated than I had previously thought.

So I returned from West Point bemused. Unable to reach a consensus on the proper role of the U.N. in world affairs, our group had left the issue out of our final policy paper. The German Fulbright scholar, whom I sat next to on the train back to New York City en route to Cambridge, told me the conference had confirmed all his ugly stereotypes about Americans.

Although I'm still conflicted about the U.N. and its ideal relation to U.S. foreign policy, the conference did teach me about my lack of knowledge and perspective. I'll have to learn that the Ivory Tower does not always accurately represent the views of the entire country.