[more], In theory, self-determination means that it is those who are ruled who decide who rules them and how. Human Rights Claims in International Politics. If the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, why is immigration reform so difficult to achieve? Then we will look at some important factors which shape how followers approach would-be leaders: inequality and economic precarity; identity and group consciousness; notions of membership, community, and hierarchy; and declining local institutions. How do nuclear weapons affect great power politics? And on what grounds can we justify confidence in our provisional answers to such questions? Then, after a few discussion classes on migration, organized crime, political corruption, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues facing the current government of Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, we turn to a seminar-style discussion of student research projects. But their worth is a continuing subject of debate. However, there is increasing recognition that International Relations in all forms, including theory, research, and policy, continue to be structured by traditional paradigms of power (e.g. [more], Every day, you interact with or through computer algorithms. In this course, we look at this debate, examining what black thinkers in particular have said about whether racial equity can be achieved in a liberal democracy founded on racial domination and why they come to the conclusions they do. And we will ask persistently: what constitutes a "Jewish justification" for a political claim in modern Jewish political theory? We also attend to the. Not surprisingly, loneliness has become epidemic. What produces political change? Does Thomas Jefferson's statue belong on a university campus? Which are more and less promising? [more], How do we judge the value of life? Should the world try to regulate the use of these technologies and, if so, how exactly? We will do so by investigating the different kinds of institutions that mediate risks throughout the lifecycle, from parental leave to old age pensions, and by comparing these institutions between different countries. We will spend equal time in the tutorial on both the theoretical and historical dimensions of Wilsonianism. What does justice demand in an age of climate change? Do black lives matter? How do we distinguish desirable leadership from dangerous leadership? Who should rule? What is the significance of death and arbitrary threats to our existence? Transportation will be provided by the college. Is "democracy" a procedure or a substance and what is the relationship between democratic government and market economies? We will ask: How have city leaders and social movements engaged with urban problems? With admissions like this, Coates stoked a long-standing debate about the prospects for racial equity in liberal democracies like the United States. A central question we will consider throughout the course if how "democratic" the conduct of campaigns actually is. Also explored will be political imprisonment in the United States. We will evaluate the role of race as it relates to public opinion, political behavior, campaigns, political institutions, and public policy debates, with special attention devoted to the nature of racial attitudes. Senior Seminar: Leadership and the Anxieties of Democracy. Is it a capitalist strategy to divide the public in order to advance the interests of the wealthy corporate elite? This research seminar investigates who uses this category, to what ends, and with what success. [more], Conservatives in the United States are traditionally hostile to state power in general and the welfare state in particular. This seminar, after discussing briefly the institutions and logic of neoliberalism, will address recent challenges to it from both the left and the right in the United States and Europe. This course takes up such questions by considering how key recent or contemporary theorists have sketched the defining features of their political worlds. It is no accident that tech became a symbol for economic growth in the 1970s, precisely when it also began to build powerful alliances in Washington. It examines work on electoral systems, formal and informal institutions, bureaucratic politics, political parties, party systems, clientelism, ethnic politics, and political violence. With authority? Among the many specific questions we will consider are whether particular religious traditions might be incompatible with democratic values, the extent to which recent changes in higher education have affected the health of democratic politics, the effects of ideological polarization on democratic discourse, and the place of the jury system in securing democratic justice. To provide a broader context for Marcuse's critical theory, we will read a selection of his writings alongside related texts by Kant, Marx, Freud, and Davis. The first part of the course will examine key theoretical problems that have occupied political thinkers from Plato and Confucius to Machiavelli and the American framers: What makes a leader successful? The course will consider these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines political science concepts with an historical approach to the evidence. [more], This tutorial will cover the Arab-Israeli dispute--from both historical and political science perspectives--from the rise of the Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century to the present day. [more], In the past half-century, American cities have gotten both much richer and much poorer. The tutorial will address the evolution of Palestinian nationalism historically and thematically, employing both primary and secondary sources. It has been said that parties are essential to democracy, and in the U.S., political parties have played a central role in extending democracy, protecting rights, and organizing power. Cohabitation has skyrocketed but marriage is disappearing, and the country's birth rate is at an all-time low. How (if at all) should we reconcile contemporary morality with historical context in assessing the leaders from our past? Readings are drawn from Supreme Court opinions, presidential addresses, congressional debates and statutes, political party platforms, key tracts of American political thought, and secondary scholarship on constitutional development. To that end, the course will discuss the origins, logic, and meaning of liberalism and capitalism and the relationships between them. This course will examine how New Yorkers have contested core issues of capitalism and democracy-how those contests have played out as the city itself has changed and how they have shaped contemporary New York. It then explores more deeply the reasons for the breakdown of this settlement, the rise of Hugo Chavez, and the decay of the "21st Century Socialist" regime under Chavez and Maduro. Theorists studied include: Frank Wilderson; Angela Davis; Derrick Bell; Cheryl Harris. This course examines the history of American involvement in Afghanistan, beginning with the Cold War when the U.S. used Afghanistan as a test case for new models of political modernization and economic development. Thus, this class is organized as a collaborative investigation with the aims of: 1) examining how whiteness and other historically dominant perspectives shape International Relations theory and research areas; 2) expanding and improving our understanding of International Relations through different lenses (e.g. We will then use our investigation of how different authors, and different traditions, understand the nation to help us assess contemporary politics and come to our own conclusions about what animates conflicts. Who might change it, and how? Our focus is on rights and liberties -- freedom of speech and religion, property, criminal process, autonomy and privacy, and equality. Students will have significant responsibility for setting the agenda for discussions through informal writing submitted prior to class. [more], Economic liberalism holds that society is better off if people enjoy economic freedom. Readings and discussions provide a view on the past and ongoing use of media in the shaping of popular knowledge, collective actions, and public policies. What are the primary causes of war and conflict? Our discussions will address such topics as activism and stoicism; equality and economic freedom; sexual freedom and gender politics; freedom of speech and religion; citizenship, migration, and cosmopolitanism; racism and colonialism; mass incarceration; and the uses and limits of state power. Finally, we will look at arguments that America has been "exceptional"--or, unlike other countries--as well as critiques of these arguments, to help us gain an understanding of future prospects for political transformation. they cannot do, and who can punish transgressions. What is our individual and collective responsibility for creating and disposing of waste? We will examine leadership to better understand American democracy--and vice versa. Thinkers to be considered may include: Aristotle, Amy Allen, Hannah Arendt, Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Nancy Cartwright, Foucault,Gramsci, Byung-Chul Han, Han Feizi, Giddens, Steven Lukes, Machiavelli, J.L. Yet, in the face of these horrors, Arendt never lost her faith in political action as a way to express and renew what she called "love of the world." Lyndon Johnson also feared the consequences of a massive American commitment, but he eventually sent over half a million men to Vietnam. [more], Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon was among the leading critical theorists and Africana thinkers of the twentieth century. Tracing the path of capitalist development in the rich democracies suggests a range of responses. Political Theory and Comparative Politics. Is intense security competition between major states inevitable, or can they get along, provided their main interests are protected? Introduction to International Relations: World Politics. Richard Nixon hoped to conclude a peace with honor when he assumed the presidency, but the war lasted for another four years with many additional casualties. into the "problem space" of Black Political Thought, students will examine the historical and structural conditions, normative arguments, theories of action, ideological conflicts, and conceptual evolutions that help define African American political imagination. Finally, we examine China's growing expansion into Africa and ask whether this is a new colonialism. To what extent do these calamities pose new, existential threats to the republic? remained a vulnerable, segregated, and stigmatized minority population. [more], When Barack Obama's successor assumes office in January 2017, they will be asked to govern an America that is out of sorts. This course examines the complex political processes that led successive American presidents to get involved in a conflict that all of them desperately wanted to avoid. All students read common secondary materials and engage in research design workshops; each will write (and rewrite) an independent research paper grounded in primary sources. Or is economic crisis the key to understanding the conditions under which dictatorships fall? What role do moral and legal considerations play in world politics? has been defined, who has defined it, what factions and classes have controlled its organizations, and the reasons why it has failed to achieve its goals. We will engage some of the central questions and issues in the current debate on East Asia. The last quarter of class focuses on student projects, on integrating and revising research to produce a set of findings and an evaluation of their meaning. Beginning with the 18th-century's transatlantic movement to abolish slavery, we will examine international movements and institutions that have affected what human rights mean, to whom, and where. As a writing intensive course, attention to the writing process and developing an authorial voice will be a recurrent focus of our work inside and outside the classroom. To this end, the department offers two routes to completing the major, each requiring nine courses. Scholars, practitioners, and observers of American politics have debated whether the net effect is positive or negative. Who benefits from the idea of universal human rights? Its critics point to what they believe this position ignores or what it wrongly assumes, and hence, how it would make bad policy. Who, exactly, has been permitted to participate in American politics, and on what terms? One central concern will be to consider the different ways of understanding "Asia", both in terms of how the term and the region have been historically constituted; another will be to facilitate an understanding some of the salient factors (geography, belief systems, economy and polity)--past and present--that make for Asia's coherence and divergences; a third concern will be to unpack the troubled notions of "East" and "West" and re-center Asia within the newly emerging narratives of global interconnectedness. that media convey). What does justice demand in an age of climate change? This tutorial has two main objectives. Does it conform to how American politics is designed to work? Can wars occur "by accident"? In addition, we will examine the long-standing arguments among both historians and political scientists over how to explain and interpret the longest and most controversial war in American history. Do concerns about information security alter states' most basic political calculations? Who decides? We will study past campaigns and then research and discuss contemporary reform efforts. What do left and right see when they survey the nation, and why is what they see so different? How does all of that media consumption influence the American political system? [more], This seminar examines incarceration, immigration detention centers, and the death penalty from historical and contemporary perspectives. parties, social movements, organizations, or local communities--are just and legitimate agents of democratic change, and those most celebrated are those who have helped the country make progress toward its ideals. At the core of feminism lies the critique of inequitable power relations. What lessons might we derive for our own times from studying this history? Finally, could the Cold War have been ended long before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989? And what does it mean to study this richly diverse region? Women studied include: Mamie Till Mobley, Anne Moody, Ella Baker, Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Bettina Aptheker, Assata Shakur, Yuri Kochiyama, Denise Oliver, Domitilia Chungara. Hoc Tribunals for crimes in Yugoslavia and those in Rwanda, in Sierra Leone and in Cambodia are giving way to a permanent International Criminal Court, which has begun to hand down indictments and refine its jurisdiction. What behaviors do different algorithms solicit, reward, discourage, or stigmatize? Although the study of religion and politics raises a host of deep philosophical questions, the principal aim of the course is to understand how religion affects politics (and vice versa), rather than to explore the normative dimensions of questions raised by the interaction of these two forces. [more], Hannah Arendt (1906-75) bore witness to some of the darkest moments in the history of politics. The course will focus on these questions using an interdisciplinary perspective that leverages political science concepts, historical case studies, and contemporary policy debates to generate core insights. Specifically, the seminar will address the election of Donald Trump as president, the furor around Brexit in the United Kingdom and the authority of the European Union in Europe, and challenges to the hegemony of global finance and controversies around immigration in both the United States and Europe. What makes American political leadership distinctive in international comparison? Why do we end up with some policies but not others? to revisit this assumption. How have they tried to make cities more decent, just, and sustainable? of politics generally--the state, legitimacy, democracy, authoritarianism, clientelism, nationalism--to comprehend political processes and transformations in various parts of the world. These and other tensions between the concept of property and that of humanity will be the focus of this course. [more], This is an introductory course on Israeli politics. Under what circumstances has positive leadership produced beneficial outcomes, and in what circumstances has it produced perverse outcomes? Two years later he formed the Pan-Africanist Congress. [more], International law embodies the rules that govern the society of states. Political theory addresses questions such as these as it investigates the fundamental problems of how people can, do, and ought to live together. Second, through a series of regular exercises and assignments, it seeks to stimulate critical thinking about fundamental questions of research design (crafting a question, performing a literature review, selecting appropriate methodological tools, evaluating data sources) and hone an array of practical skills--whether interpretive, historical, or quantitative--involved in political science research. How does this idea about individual value liberate and entrap? [more], Currently 272 million international migrants live in a country different from where they were born, an increase of 78% since 1990. Within a few years, the finality of that victory was brought into question as the Taliban regrouped and eventually reasserted itself as a formidable guerilla army that the U.S. military could not easily defeat. This tutorial will first examine the nature of their relationship to both Realist and Wilsonian perspectives on American foreign relations. This course confronts humanitarianism as an ideology through reading its defenders and critics, and as a political strategy assessing its usefulness, to whom. Political dissent has taken various forms since 1979 but the regime has found ways to repress and divert it. The second part considers mid-20th-century writers who revise and critique economic liberalism from a variety of perspectives, including Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, Arthur Okun, and Albert O. Hirschman. If it is not itself a form of property, how can we explain the use of the human body to acquire possessions, create wealth, and mediate the exchange of other kinds of property? How can it be known and pursued? The second part of the course focuses on the Iraq War and its consequences; the rise of ISIS; the Arab Spring; Turkey's changing foreign relations; and the war in Syria. The universal model is Silicon Valley. Our focus is both contemporary and comparative, organized thematically around common political experiences and attributes across the region. Why are some countries stable democracies while others struggle with military coups or authoritarian rule? This research seminar investigates organized international, multilateral attempts to mold a delinquent country's domestic politics by enforcing extranational standards. . Challenges to Neoliberalism in the United States and Europe since the Financial Crisis. This suggests that the better we can understand the nature of cause and effect, the better we can understand power. What are the forces that shape whether citizens pay attention to politics, vote, work on campaigns, protest, or engage in other types of political action? Finally, could the Cold War have been ended long before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989? How people ground this concept--what they think its origin is--does matter, but evaluating those foundations is not our focus. Examples of internationalized transitional justice abound. We ask three central questions to inform our investigation: 1) What is democracy and its alternatives? [more], Authoritarian regimes are plentiful in the world today. [more], Scandals. Among the questions that we will address: What is justice? Is democratic leadership in service of "dangerous" goals acceptable, and what are these goals? At the core of feminism lies the critique of inequitable power relations. Escalating racial violence in cities. Those who proclaimed "liberty, egality, fraternity" for themselves violently denied them to others. [more], Popular unrest. In general, the course will focus on competition between some the world's premier cyber powers, such as China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, and the United States. Along the way we will discuss both the origins of capitalist society as well as its more recent transformations through the rise of the welfare state, consumerism, and globalization. Contemporary Africana Social and Political Philosophy. [more], The course deals with South African politics since the end of apartheid. In what ways does this institution promote or hinder the legitimacy, responsiveness, and responsibility expected of a democratic governing institution? Our primary questions will be these: Why does transformative leadership seem so difficult today? We will begin by examining institutional constraints facing political leaders: globalization, sclerotic institutions, polarization, endemic racism, and a changing media environment. Thirty years later the future looks seriously derailed. Through these explorations, which will consider a wide variety of visual artifacts and practices (from 17th century paintings to the optical systems of military drones and contemporary forms of surveillance), we will also take up fundamental theoretical questions about the place of the senses in political life. We will examine when and how individuals and leadership have mattered vis--vis broader historical and contextual factors, including economic developments, demographic change, war, and constitutional and institutional parameters. Anyone with a prospective proposal should contact the department chair for guidance. Finally, we examine whether the emergence of a neoliberal economic order has affected the organization of political society? [more], "Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders. What is the fate of democracy in the U.S.? Like domestic law, it is enforced only some of the time, and then against the weak more than the strong. [more], Geography has decreed that the futures of Mexico and the United States will be tightly bound. This seminar will address these questions with the aim of introducing students to important theoretical topics and key concepts that are relevant to the comparative and critical study of Asia. Should they, perhaps, abandon Europe altogether and re-constitute themselves elsewhere? to solidarity, where citizens share social risks as well as economic rewards. Course readings focus on Locke, Hegel, Marx, and critical perspectives from feminist theory, critical theory, and critical legal studies (Cheryl Harris, Alexander Kluge, Oskar Negt, Carole Pateman, Rosalind Petchesky, and Dorothy Roberts, among others). Women studied include: Mamie Till Mobley, Anne Moody, Ella Baker, Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Bettina Aptheker, Assata Shakur, Yuri Kochiyama, Denise Oliver, Domitilia Chungara. The first is historical and mostly lecture. But social risk has not disappeared--you could lose your job, get into an accident, or find yourself plunged somehow into poverty. We will conclude by reflecting on what lessons the welfare state offers for managing this century's biggest social risk: climate change. In this course we will respond to these and related questions through an investigation of "religion" as a concept in political theory. Departing from "just so" stories of technological determinism, we take up the lens of comparative political economy to investigate the politics that allowed US tech firms to shape economic policy to meet their interests. 2) How do we identify democratic breakdown? Type in your search terms and press enter or navigate down for suggested search results. [more], The comparative study of politics looks mainly at what goes on inside countries, the domestic dynamics of power, institutions, and identities. Cold War Intellectuals: Civil Rights, Writers and the CIA. How has that particular aspect of political life changed in the recent past? Who is equal? For whom do they function? race, class, gender, disability, indigenous, queer, subaltern); and 3) exploring the implications of a more inclusive approach to International Relations, both within the classroom as well as contemporary decolonization movements in the US and around the world. Authors read may include Schmitt, Strauss, Rawls, Arendt, Wolin, Rancire, Brown, Connolly, Hartman, Sharpe, Moten, Wynter, Sexton, Edelman, Muoz, Coulthard, Simpson, Lazzarato, Haraway, Latour. Asking whether liberal thought, to borrow the famous joke about economists, assumes the can openers of liberalism and capitalism, taking as given that which is constructed historically, the course will look at leading theories about the role states play in constituting and maintaining capitalist economies, the definition and nature of power in liberal societies, and, more recently, the connection between identities, politics, classes, and states. How are we to understand this contradiction as a matter of justice? The Wilsonian Tradition in American Foreign Policy. Or agency? In this tutorial, students will examine the origins of the Silicon Valley model and other countries' attempts to emulate it. Contributions to theory include the writings and activism of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Indeed, in the study of American political development, we often look to complex processes and underlying causes as explanations for how and why ideas, institutions, and policies both emerge and evolve. We will examine how founders such as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison envisioned the relation between the people and the government; how workers, African Americans, and women fought to participate in American politics; and how globalization, polarization, and inequality are straining American democracy and political leadership in the 21st century. We begin with the legacies of colonialism, the slave trade, and the politics of liberation. Does the concept fit well with, and reinforce, some institutions and configurations of power, and make others difficult to sustain (or even to conceive)? Moving from the emergence of cybernetics during World War II through such contemporary examples as facial recognition software, this seminar approaches algorithms as complex technological artifacts that have social histories and political effects. Polarization. Why a two-party system, and what role do third parties play?

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