Summer 2008 Course Descriptions

Home > Courses > Summer 2008 Course Descriptions

GVPT309L: Human Rights in World Politics: Its Impact in Latin America

This course analyzes the historical development and growth of human rights as a distinct international regime, with a vast send of universal norms, governmental and non-governmental national, regional and world actors, mechanisms for implementation with a wide range of operational tools, from declaratory statements, through fact-finding, investigation missions, condemnation for gross violations and cultural, diplomatic, economic and military sanctions. The old concept of sovereignty is being challenged by humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to act. Current criticism arises on the will and ability of the international community to enforce such decision globally, and a discussion will focus on "too little too late" and double standards. Such process has impacted Latin American political development, was instrumental in the process of transition and consolidation of democracy and currently in the claim for socio-economic as well as indigenous rights. Students will be ask to prepare papers on selected cases studies from the region.

GVPT444: American Political Thought: Liberty and Equality

In this course, we will survey American Political Thought from its birth or founding in the Revolutionary period until its rebirth or re-founding with the American Civil War (or perhaps simply the completion of the founding).  We will follow the thought that underlies the founding, that first experimented with the notion of creating the union, and the thought that went into sustaining the union.  The greatest writings of American Political Thought are not the work of political theorists detached from politics, but are of the men and women who were immersed in the political struggle for freedom and equality.  We rely mostly, therefore, on speeches and writings of great American statesmen, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John C. Calhoun, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln.  The sole departure from this approach is our study of Alexis de Tocqueville, to whom intelligent students of American politics frequently turn.  We will strive, above all, to understand the moral and political principles of these thinkers.  It is always an important task to understand the thought of the founders, even while the thought of the founders is certainly open to criticisms.  Above all it is argued that the founders were not sufficiently democratic and did not provide for proper safeguards for liberty and, more often, equality.  The problems with which these political thinkers of the highest order struggled still confront us today, and are therefore worthy of investigation.