Global Issues

This course begins with the premise that race is a socially constructed category that affects and simultaneously is shaped by the dynamics of racial and cultural interactions. It is hoped that this course will help to increase self-awareness of our own cultural backgrounds, and the contexts (social, cultural and historical) in which we live and communicate. The course will also grapple with questions about how race affects experiences of globalization. How has globalization affected understanding of race and gender?

Because zombies can spread across borders and threaten states and civilizations, they should command the attention of scholars and policymakers. There are many sources of fear in world politics—terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, etc. It is striking however, how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what international relations theory would—or should—guide the human response?

This course is intended to introduce you to the study of philosophy by learning how to critically reflect and evaluate global moral problems, such as: human rights, cloning, abortion, environmental sustainability, racism and ethnic discrimination, biotechnologies, hunger, and war. Each of these issues will be examined from a variety of global perspectives and moral theories.  Among the many questions we will examine this semester are: How do we resolve ethical dilemmas in a global context?

This seminar helps students develop the economic tools needed to examine the impact of immigration and immigration policies over the past century.

Wealth vs. resource exploitation, development vs. sustainability, wilderness and Aboriginal land claims vs.

When Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990, he repeated the words he had spoken at his trial 26 years earlier: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the violent suppression of resistance to colonial and white settler regimes in Southern Africa provoked international condemnation.