Course description: This course explores ideas of individual ethics and political community, the ethics of political rule, freedom and slavery, popular sovereignty and revolution, and equality and inequality in political thought. Readings will be drawn from both canonical and contemporary authors, including Sophocles, Douglass, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, and Tocqueville. This is an introductory course, which emphasizes both thematic and historical approaches to political theory.
Course description: This course is about the politics of human rights. Although it is impossible to cover everything, its scope is as broad as the term itself, spanning from the French Revolution in 1789 to the present day, and mapping the world from China to Poland to Zimbabwe. It includes works of political science, history, political theory, public policy, and investigative journalism. We will grapple with four clusters of big questions. First, a question of political theory: what are human rights, and what are the major critiques of the idea? Then we turn to empirical questions. Second, is it possible to prevent genocide, and is it morally acceptable and politically wise to launch humanitarian military missions to prevent the slaughter of civilians within another country? Third, how do dictatorships function, and how can human rights activists undermine them both from the inside and the outside? Fourth and finally, what are the laws of war, and is it possible to punish those war criminals and terrorists who violate them?