POLISCI 10SC American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century


Coit D. Blacker Department of Political Science and Institute for International Studies


array of foreign policy challenges. The world in which we find ourselves is complex, contradictory, and highly uncertain. What role can and should the United States play in such a world? What are the major international challenges with which U.S. policymakers and the American people will have to contend in the immediate future and over the longer term? Given that the power of the United States is limited, how should we determine our priorities? Under what conditions should the United States be prepared to use force, and when is force inappropriate? What lessons have we learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Can—and should—the United States provide the kind of global leadership that our political leaders tell us that we must? In this course we will explore the substance of U.S. foreign policy as well as the political considerations that influence both the making and the actual conduct of American diplomacy. Topics will include the challenges to policy associated with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, failing and failed states, and regional, interstate, and intrastate conflict. We will also examine how the changing distribution of power in the international system is likely to impact the United States and its allies. Finally, we will consider how domestic political considerations influence both the framing and the implementation of this country’s foreign policy. In addition to the readings, students, operating in teams of three, will research and write a short policy memorandum on a topic the instructor designates. Students, each of whom will be assigned a particular role, will also take part in a 48-hour crisis simulation at the end of the course.


T Coit D. Blacker


is Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, as well as holding other endowed positions at Stanford. As special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs, he oversaw implementation of U.S. policy toward Russia and the New Independent States and advised on matters relating to the former Soviet Union. More


wenty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States confronts a dizzying


HISTORY 10SC Biography in History, Fiction, and Elsewhere


Steven Zipperstein Department of History


as the obscure — will be explored in this course. Biographical writing can be frivolous, but at its best it has the capacity to undercover much of life’s richness, complexity, and confusions. We’ll study biography with the use of some of the most resonant, compelling examples of the genre. Together we’ll read books about poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Henry James’ Aspern Papers, the brilliant novel on biographical writing, A. S. Byatt’s Possession, and Norman Mailer on Marilyn Monroe. How one chooses one topic over another; the differences and similarities between the representation of lives in fiction and biography; the benefits and pitfalls of an intense identification with one’s own subjects – these and other matters will be examined. We’ll meet in San Francisco with local writers wrestling with issues of this sort, and students will be encouraged to try their hands at writing about lives based on research, personal observation, or both.


H Steven J. Zipperstein,


Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, has written and edited many books including two prize-winning biographies, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism, and Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion and the Furies of Writing. He has taught at Harvard, Oxford, and Cornell as well as at universities in Russia, Poland, France, and Israel. More


ow biographers, novelists, critics and others have written about the rhythms of life — the lives of the famous as well


6


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20