POL 297 - Special Topics in Political Philosophy

FDR: SS2
Credits: 3 in fall and winter, 4 in spring

Prerequisites: First-year or sophomore standing or instructor consent. A seminar in political science for students at the introductory or intermediate level. Topic, hour, and instructor are announced prior to registration. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2016, POL 297-01: Special Topics in Political Philosophy: Resistance and the State (3). Prerequisite: POL 111 or instructor consent. States claim to benefit the people they represent. But the relationship between the modern state and the people is not always a happy one, nor devoid of conflict and violence. In this course, we examine the grounds and reach of state power, and diverse forms of resistance to it. What makes state power legitimate? What happens when the state itself is involved in the oppression of the people it claims to represent? When are the people justified in resisting the state and disobeying the law? What forms such disobedience may justifiably take? We explore these questions through reading a wide range of literature on state and resistance from Sophocles’ Antigone to Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Examples of resistance around the world are considered including revolution, anticolonial resistance, hunger strikes, conscientious objection to military draft, and the civil rights movement in the US. We also question the role of contemporary global powers – “empires” – and the resistance to them. Thinkers considered include Hobbes, Foucault, Fanon, Gandhi, Frederick Douglas, and Malcolm X. (SS2) Kemerli.

Fall 2015, POL 397-01: Seminar: Bill Clinton (3). This seminar focuses on the presidential administration of William Jefferson Clinton and explores the domestic and foreign policy issues that he encountered in the White House including: the budget and tax policies of 1993, the failed effort at health care reform, the response to international emergencies in Haiti and Bosnia, welfare reform, the movement toward a balanced budget, the negotiation of a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, the failure to secure a peace agreement in the Middle East, and the impeachment process that preoccupied Clinton’s second term. Students evaluate the Clinton administration using recently opened archives of presidential oral history and write major research papers on topics related to this presidency. (SS2) Strong.