Course reading will be supplemented by speakers representing the Health Care industry, Health Care Consumers and the government. We will also look at the ethical and political problems posed by Health care issues such as AIDS and genetic testing. The course applies public policy analytic models to help explain why governments pursue the policies they do, and what the consequences of these policies are. The development of the environmental movement is traced, as well as policy responses, and the difficulty of shaping effective policy to address global phenomena. The course provides preparation for the Model Senate program held in the spring.
Emphasis is placed on the interplay of politics and jurisprudence in the operation of the courts.
Through an analysis of such primary texts as Plato's The Republic , Augustine's City of God , and Machiavelli's The Prince , this course traces the development of political thought from its ancient concerns with virtue and political community to the modern emphasis oN freedom and statecraft. In learning how others thought about the role of politics in human society, students will better understand their own value preferences and philosophical orientations in politics. This course begins with texts that reveal the origins of modern American and European democratic theories. After an assessment of the conservative arguments against these theories, the course tackles the development of the two dominant political ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, liberalism and Marxism. Texts to be studied include Leviathan by Hobbes, On Liberty by Mill, and The Communist Manifesto by Marx.