WEST WINDSOR -- Mercer County Community College (MCCC) is kicking off its new Model United Nations Team with a guest speaker, Jeff Laurenti, an expert on international relations through service with The Century Foundation (TCF), the United Nations Association of the United States (UNAUS), and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Laurenti’s presentation, "The U.N. Turns 70: Decoration or Decision-Maker?," will take place at noon on Tuesday, Oct. 27, in Room 107 of the MCCC Communications Building on the MCCC West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. The lecture is designed to coincide with United Nations Day -- Oct. 24 -- and launches MCCC’s new Model UN team, with the assistance of John Vincent, the president of the local United Nations Association of the United States local chapter. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Laurenti was senior fellow at TCF on international affairs for eight years, served as director for TCF’s international task force on Afghanistan, and as co-director of TCF’s peace and security initiative with the Center for American Progress. He is the author of numerous monographs on subjects including international peace and security, terrorism, U.N. reform, international law and justice, and other issues.

Laurenti was executive director of policy studies at the UNAUS until 2003, and then served seven years on the association’s Board of Directors. He also served as deputy director of the United Nations Foundation's United Nations and Global Security initiative, which provided inputs to the work on international security of the high-level panel on threats, challenges, and change commissioned by U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan.

He is a member of the CFR. He was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey in 1986, has advised several presidential campaigns, and from 1978 to 1984 was executive director of the New Jersey Senate. He has co-edited and contributed to “Breaking the Nuclear Impasse: New Prospects for Security against Weapons Threats” (2007) and “Power and Superpower: Global Leadership and Exceptionalism in the 21st Century” (2007) and his articles and analysis have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and on National Public Radio, the BBC, France24, AlJazeera, Russia Today, and numerous other international media and policy journals.

Graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in government from Harvard University, he earned his masters in public affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He speaks Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.  

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