International Relations

This course is designed to give students a broad understanding of role of the U.S.'s role within the international system. To understand current U.S. foreign policy, we must also understand the past. This is especially important in understanding how international actors perceive the U.S., how we have related to these actors over time, and how to think about ethics and foreign policy.

Can international law help bring about a more cooperative and secure world? Explore how international law has developed over time, expanded in scope, and is limited in its effectiveness by powerful states and monied interests. Students will analyze case studies that uncover tensions that exist between the normative ideals of international law in theory and the limitations of it in practice.

What are the most dangerous threats to human survival on planet Earth and what can be done? Students will use the methods of risk management, threat assessment, and scenario planning to answer these questions as we take on topics like global warming, asteroid strikes, nuclear war, and peak oil.

This course focuses on the range of strategies that countries use to solve problems and pursue goals. We address when, why, and how some strategies are more effective than others. Lessons are drawn from business, war, diplomacy, and politics.

What role does American culture play in shaping how and why the United States goes to war? Over the course of American history, what are the continuities and changes in how and why the United States has fought its wars? What is the relationship between how the US fights its conventional wars and irregular wars?

Students apply concepts and theories of political science to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, both to demonstrate how to apply the concepts and theory, but also to explain the roots and dynamics of the conflict. 

Students will learn to assess threats from terrorist groups and learn strategies for combating terrorism. Students will apply threat assessment methodology and combating terrorism strategies to current and historical threat groups like ISIS, al Qaeda, the KKK and the IRA, among others.