Jared Rabinowitz

Course Description: Human rights play a fundamental and highly contested role in orienting and organizing modern politics at the global level. How have human rights assumed such prominence, and how has the rise of the international human rights regime changed world politics? Are human rights mere rhetoric or do they have independent moral and political standing? Where do they come from? How can and should human rights be enforced? Foundationally, are human rights compatible with the core international principle of state sovereignty? And in cases where sovereignty and human rights conflict, what—if anything—should those with power do to respond?

This course explores these larger questions through a combination of historical and theoretical readings and class discussions. In the first part of the semester, we consider the intellectual and political roots of international human rights. In the latter half of the semester, we shift our attention to areas of contemporary global concern, including migration, economic development, climate change, and civil and international conflict.

Course Description: This course provides an overview of the United Nations system from the perspective of important academic and policy debates. As an upper-level course, the main learning goals are to impart knowledge of the relevant scholarly literatures in the Political Science and International Relations fields and to provide the background and skills that enable students to analyze competing arguments and claims about the subject matter. More specific course goals are to understand scholarly debates about the role of the UN and other international institutions, and to provide a foundation for critically evaluating arguments about their role.

The course is divided into three parts. The first part begins with an overview of various theoretical perspectives on IR generally and on the role of international organizations more specifically. We then examine the historical evolution of the UN and its precursors, including the League of Nations, and outline the UN’s structure and the key actors in the UN system. The second part of the course deals with issues of peace and security, which are central to the UN’s mission. We will discuss topics such as peacekeeping, collective security, and humanitarian intervention, and will use the case of Iraq to illustrate the UN’s role in some of these areas. The third part of the course addresses other issues of importance to the UN, including human rights, economic cooperation, sustainable development, and the environment. We end with a session on accountability and effectiveness in global governance.

Course Description: This course reads ancient, modern, and contemporary works in political thought with two aims. First, through careful reading of these classic and important arguments, we can ask urgent questions about citizenship and the state that will give us a better understanding of our own role in society and its governance. Second, the intelligent conduct of social science requires sustained reflection about the concepts and values that guide inquiry; political theory facilitates this within the discipline of political science.

It may seem surprising to you that we would try to understand contemporary politics through reading mostly old, even ancient, texts. But these ideas have shaped history and so, to understand our present, we need to understand our past. A clearer theoretical understanding of the major concepts of political theory will better equip you to analyze them in your own life and to apply them in social scientific research. To those ends, we first orient ourselves by reading about different visions of politics: as directed at the highest good, as an arena for cruelty and glory, as the product of a contract, and so on. Then we take a close look at the crucial concepts of freedom and injustice with an eye toward clarifying our own views about what they are and how they help us understand politics today.

Course Description: This course is an introduction to the study of international relations (IR). It fosters skills to critically analyze and discuss a wide range of political phenomena, with a special focus on processes of conflict and cooperation in global politics. We start with an introduction to the general theoretical frameworks of the discipline, such as Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. In the second part of the course we apply our theoretical tools to specific topics, including the causes of war, economic relations,
international organizations, and environmental politics.