“A girl in my class was shot. Her dad was a member of the Baath party,” Arwa Hamdan added. “You’re risking your life every time you go to university. But we have to continue.”

She added that the visit to America had underscored the contrast between the two nations.

“That’s the thing we noticed when we first got here—that there were no roadside bombs going off and no explosions,” she said.

In addition to representing the country of Austria at the U.N. simulation and participating in discussions and receptions, the Iraqi students also had time this weekend to sample American food, attend a dance for HNMUN delegates, and even take part in their first-ever snowball fight.

“By any measure you could have, it was definitely a success,” said HNMUN’s Secretary General Matthew R. Smith ’05. “Not only for the delegates, but for all the people in the Harvard community that got to interact with them.”

He added that this year’s conference was the largest ever held.

Student delegates from Providence College—who represented Iraq at the conference—were especially interested in speaking to the Iraqi visitors, and even went out to dinner and exchanged phone numbers with them, according to Dhruv Taneja ’07, a board member of the International Relations Council, which sponsored the conference.

“It was so unique to get their insider student perspective,” said Taneja, who organized the Iraqi delegates’ on-campus events. “They’re not anti-American. Their suggestions are about how to create a new Iraq.”

At a dinner Sunday night sponsored by the Society of Arab Students, Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations Director S. Allen Counter emphasized the importance of bringing international student leaders to campus.

“It’s a remarkable success where students are able to act as diplomats and set the tone for international relations for the future,” Counter said. “I would hope this could be used as an example of reaching out to educate and share and create a new generation of educators.”

—Staff writer Victoria Kim can be reached at vkim@fas.harvard.edu.