This course explores the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in political struggles over the distribution and uses of power in the American constitutional system. Issues include the division of powers between state and national governments, and the branches of the federal government; economic powers of private actors and governmental regulators; the authority of governments to enforce or transform racial and gender hierarchies; and the powers of individuals to make basic choices, such as a woman's power to have an abortion. We will pay special attention to how the tasks of justifying the Supreme Court's own power, and constitutionalism more broadly, contribute to logically debatable, but politically powerful constitutional arguments. Readings include Supreme Court decisions and background materials on their historical and political context.

This class examines the strategy and politics of warfare, focusing on the way actors plan military campaigns and the factors that are likely to lead to victory and defeat. The course readings center in particular on the factors driving changes in warfare and civil-military relations. The course will cover a wide range of topics from theories of war-fighting to historical military campaigns to insurgency warfare, terrorism, and the future of war.

This class examines the strategy and politics of warfare, focusing on the way actors plan military campaigns and the factors that are likely to lead to victory and defeat. The course readings center in particular on the factors driving changes in warfare and civil-military relations. The course will cover a wide range of topics from theories of war-fighting to historical military campaigns to insurgency warfare, terrorism, and the future of war.

This class examines the strategy and politics of warfare, focusing on the way actors plan military campaigns and the factors that are likely to lead to victory and defeat. The course readings center in particular on the factors driving changes in warfare and civil-military relations. The course will cover a wide range of topics from theories of war-fighting to historical military campaigns to insurgency warfare, terrorism, and the future of war.

This class examines the strategy and politics of warfare, focusing on the way actors plan military campaigns and the factors that are likely to lead to victory and defeat. The course readings center in particular on the factors driving changes in warfare and civil-military relations. The course will cover a wide range of topics from theories of war-fighting to historical military campaigns to insurgency warfare, terrorism, and the future of war.

This seminar introduces students to the nation's trillion-dollar tax-exempt sector with a focus on religious nonprofit organizations including congregations and other so-called faith-based institutions. Among the topics it explores are new and old questions surrounding church-state relations, the role of relgion in American politics, empirical "faith factor" research, and attempts to estimate the social costs and benefits associated with diverse religious nonprofit organizations.

This course is an historical survey of the main bases and substances of politics among black Americans and the relation of black politics to the American political order. Its two main objectives are: 1) to provide a general sense of pertinent historical issues and relations as a way of helping to make sense of the present and 2) to develop criteria for evaluating political scientists' and others' claims regarding the status and characteristics of black American political activity.

This course is an introduction to the field of political communication, conceptual approaches to analyzing communication in various forms, including advertising, speech making, campaign debates, and candidates' and office-holders' uses of news. The focus of this course is on the interplay in the U.S. between television and politics. The course includes a history of televised campaign practices from the 1952 presidential contest onward.

The course surveys some of the principal themes in the political economies of lower income countries. The questions we shall seek to address cover a broad terrain. Who are the key actors? What are their beliefs, interests and motivations? What are their constraints? How are these being affected by closer economic linkages between national economies? While there is no single integrative framework or paradigm into which these themes neatly fit, a common thread is the changing dynamics and interplay between the local, the national, and the global. A familiarity with basic economic concepts will be helpful, but is not necessary.