THE 2015 NATIONAL MODEL UNITED NATIONS
Week A Delegate Seminars – Tuesday, 24 March – 4:00 pm
The State of Disarmament and Arms Control
Sheraton New York – 2nd Floor, Empire East
Join our policy experts and civil society leaders as they share information on the ongoing discussions and
negotiations related to nuclear disarmament, chemical weapons, conventional arms control, and the global
arms trade. Moderated by Dr. Shelton Williams, President, Osgood Center for International Studies.
John Burroughs, J.D., Ph.D., Executive Director of the
New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Alexandra Hiniker,
Representative to the UN for PAX
Randy Rydell, Ph. D., Executive Advisor to the Hiroshima
Peace Culture Foundation (Mayors for Peace)
Dr. Shelton Williams (Moderator),
President, Osgood Center for International Studies
John Burroughs, J.D., Ph.D., is Executive Director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear
Policy. He represents LCNP in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review proceedings, the United Nations, and
other international forums. He is currently a member of the international legal team for the Marshall Islands in its
Nuclear Zero cases in the International Court of Justice. Dr. Burroughs is contributor, Unspeakable suffering - the
humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (2013) (available at reachingcriticalwill.org); contributor, Assuring Destruction
Forever: Nuclear Weapon Modernization Around the World (2012) (available at reachingcriticalwill.org); co-editor and
contributor, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and Paths to Peace
(2007) (available at wmdreport.org); co-editor and contributor, Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S.
Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties (2003); and author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons:
A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice (1998). He has additionally published articles and opeds in journals and newspapers including the Fordham International Law Journal, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
THE 2015 NATIONAL MODEL UNITED NATIONS
Week A Delegate Seminars – Tuesday, 24 March – 4:00 pm
the World Policy Journal, and Newsday. Dr. Burroughs has taught international law as an adjunct professor at
Rutgers Law School, Newark.
Alexandra Hiniker is the Representative to the UN for PAX, where she focuses on Syria, Iraq and South Sudan as
well as humanitarian disarmament and arms control policies. Before joining PAX, Alexandra spent five years
working in three of the countries most affected by landmines and cluster bombs – first with the United Nations in
Cambodia, and after that with the Cluster Munition Coalition in Laos and then in Lebanon. She began her
international development career implementing pandemic preparedness projects in Africa, Asia, and Eastern
Europe with DAI. She was a Princeton Project 55 Fellow with the Center for Neighborhood Technology in
Chicago, and studied at the University of Chicago, Sciences Po Paris, and Uniwersytet Jagiellonski.
Randy Rydell, Ph. D., is an Executive Advisor to the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation (Mayors for Peace). He
served until his retirement in 2014 as Senior Political Affairs Officer in the Office of Ms. Angela Kane, the UN’s
High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, where he was Team Leader of the Strategic Planning Unit. He was
appointed Senior Counsellor and Report Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (Blix
Commission) and Senior Fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C, positions he held from
January 2005 to June 2006 as. He joined the UN secretariat in 1998, where has served as an adviser to UnderSecretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala and his successors, Ambassadors Nobuyasu Abe and Nobuaki Tanaka, and
Sergio Duarte. He was Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (2001) and as
a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School (September 1998 to February 1999, and
September 2009 to January 2010). He received the “Unsung Heroes” award in 2009 from the Center for NonProliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
Rydell worked for Senator John Glenn between 1987 and 1998 as a member of the Professional Staff of the
Committee on Governmental Affairs of the United States Senate. He assisted in the drafting and subsequent
enactment of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994 and other legislation. He also served as a staff
member of the Senate’s Arms Control Observer Group.
He was an international political analyst at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1980 to 1986, where
he studied problems related to the global spread of nuclear weapons. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the
Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
from 1979 to 1980. He received a B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia (1973),
an M.Sc. in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1974), an M.A. in
Political Science from Princeton University (1977), and a Ph. D. in Political Science from Princeton (1980).
Shelton Williams (Moderator) is president and founder of the Osgood Center for International Studies. He has
served in the US Government in three agencies involved in arms control issues: The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission where he worked on IAEA affairs and helped craft an early version of the Additional Protocol; the
State Department where in addition to serving as Madeleine Alight's chief adviser on disarmament, he was a US
delegate to the 1995 NPT and Review Conference; and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where he
worked on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1996 he was awarded the Department of State's
Superior Service Award for his contribution to the 1995 NPT Review Conference. He has written extensively on
Non-proliferation in International Affairs, including US, India and the Bomb in 1969, Multilateral Diplomacy in the
Post Cold War Era in 2005, and the disarmament sections of the 2003 UN Encyclopedia. He has been involved
with Model UN for thirty-three years as a faculty adviser (1983-present), NCCA Board Member (1990-1994 and
2004-2010), and Advisory Board Member (2010-present).