This seminar is devoted to an examination of United Nations peacekeeping, from its inception in 1956 in the wake of the Suez Crisis, to its increasingly important role as an enforcer of political stability in sub-Saharan Africa. We will look at the practice of "classic" peacekeeping as it developed during the Cold War, with the striking exception of the Congo Crisis of 1960; the rise and fall of so-called "second-generation peacekeeping"¿more accurately labeled "peace enforcement"¿in the early 1990s in Bosnia and Somalia; and the reemergence in recent years of a muscular form of peacekeeping in sub-Saharan Africa, most notably in Congo in 2013.nStudents will learn the basic history of the United Nations since 1945 and the fundamentals of the United Nations Charter, especially with respect to the use of force and the sovereignty of member states. While the course does not attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of the historical details of any particular peacekeeping mission, students should come away with a firm grasp of the historical trajectory of U.N. peacekeeping and the evolving arguments of its proponents and critics over the years.nEach session of the course is structured around the discussion of assigned readings. Students are expected to complete the readings before class and to come to class prepared to participate in discussions. Each student will serve as rapporteur for one of the assigned readings, providing a critical summary of the reading in question and helping to stimulate the discussion to follow. The instructor will occasionally begin a session with brief introductory remarks (no more than ten minutes) to provide historical context about one or another topic. Required coursework includes two short papers whose particular topic and guidelines will be announced in class.

Speaking, reading, writing, and listening. First-year sequence enables students to converse, write and read essays on topics such as personal history, experiences, familiar people.

This introductory-level course is targeted to students with no linguistics background. It is designed to provide an overview of methods, findings, and problems in eight main areas of linguistics: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Historical Linguistics, and Sociolinguistics. Through lectures, in-class activities, and problem sets, you will come away with an overview of various linguistic phenomena, a sense of the diversity across languages, skills of linguistic analysis, an awareness of connections between these linguistics and applications of linguistics more broadly, and a basis for understanding the systematic, but complex nature of human language. While much of the course uses English to illuminate various points, you will be exposed to and learn to analyze languages other than English. By the end of the course, you should be able to explain similarities and differences of human languages, use basic linguistic terminology appropriately, apply the tools of linguistic analysis to problems and puzzles of linguistics, understand the questions that drive much research in linguistics, and explain how understanding linguistics is relevant for a variety of real-world phenomena.

This course has a require discussion section in additionl to the main lecture section.

This course presents how the “seven sages,” Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and the ancient Skeptics believed we should make decisions and then evaluates those theories with an eye towards present day needs and uses for a decision theory. We will consider how ancient Greek philosophers formulated answers to questions like: What is the role of knowledge in decision making? How do urgent circumstances change how we make decisions? How should we factor in experts and mentors into our decision making? What is the relationship between morality and rationality? How much do we need to know about ourselves to make good decisions? No philosophical experience is presupposed.

Please enroll in this course via Axess/SimpleEnroll and use Canvas to enroll in the discussion sections.

This course is an introduction to philosophical issues raised by the growing field of artificial intelligence. What does the rise of increasingly complex artificial intelligence models (OpenAI; ChatGPT, AlphaGo, text-to-image generators) tell us about the nature of mind, rationality, and human creativity? What are ethical issues raised by the increasingly sophisticated use of algorithms in our daily lives - whether it be spotting credit card fraud, targeted advertising, curating our social media content, or prison sentencing? How do notions such as 'moral agency', 'practical reason', and 'responsibility' pertain, if at all, to applications of artificial intelligence, e.g., automated cars and weapons? What does the future of human work look like in light of developments in artificial intelligence? No philosophical background is presupposed. The aim of this class will be to help students engage with the philosophical issues raised by emerging technologies. Individual and group assignments will enable students to develop their critical skills in both written and discussion­based work.

Please enroll in this course via Axess/SimpleEnroll and use Canvas to enroll in the discussion sections.

An introduction to key feminist thinkers and ideas through a survey of the history of modern gender and sexuality. Feminism is traditionally differentiated from other political and philosophical movements by a focus on the experiences of women, their lives, the forms of oppression they suffer, and the modes of theory and action which they undertake. The history of feminist thought and action, however, has been troubled by the difficulty of specifying the category of women. For feminist thought, this difficulty suggests the impossibility of isolating the theoretical or practical project of liberating women from a broader critique of gendered life and of other distinct forms of injustice, such as race, class, ability, age, and the like. In this class, we will engage this problem by exploring how gender has been socially and historically constructed. We will approach the unity in difference of “woman,” as well as “man,” “trans,” and other gendered identities and roles, by investigating how different forms and periods of social organization have given rise to diverse ways of understanding and structuring gender. Rather than seeing “woman” as something presupposed by feminism, we will interpret feminism as a methodology for investigating the differential formation of “woman” as a temporally dynamic and internally complex category which is always defined in relation to other genders and to social systems which are not obviously “about” gender, like politics, the economy, natural and social science, the arts, religion, philosophy (of course), and in a word, society as a whole.

Please enroll in this course via Axess/SimpleEnroll and use Canvas to enroll in the discussion sections.

This class introduces students to political philosophy through the problems of justice, equality, and freedom. We will focus on contemporary political thought, engaging with debates about each of these concepts and identifying connections between them. What is justice? What is the relationship between ideal conditions of justice and current social conditions? What forms of injustice should the state try to remedy? What is the point of equality? How should we assess equality? Is there an obligation to mitigate ‘natural’ inequalities? How much personal freedom should be allowed in society? When is state authority legitimate? Do we have an obligation always to obey the law? Throughout the course we will evaluate answers to these questions, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different arguments and theoretical frameworks.

Please enroll in this course via Axess/SimpleEnroll and use Canvas to enroll in the discussion sections.

Approaches to the study of conflict and cooperation in world affairs. Applications to war, terrorism, trade policy, the environment, and world poverty. Debates about the ethics of war and the global distribution of wealth.

Please enroll in this course through Axess and use Canvas to enroll in the discussion sections.

This course examines ethical and political questions that arise in doing public service work, whether volunteering, service learning, humanitarian endeavors overseas, or public service professions such as medicine and teaching. What motives do people have to engage in public service work? Are self-interested motives troublesome? What is the connection between service work and justice? Should the government or schools require citizens or students to perform service work? Is mandatory service an oxymoron?

This course provides an introduction to strategic reasoning. We discuss ideas such as the commitment problem, credibility in signaling, cheap talk, moral hazard and adverse selection. Concepts are developed through games played in class, and applied to politics, business and everyday life.