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This course examines foundational reasons for why some countries remain poor and why inequality persists today. In addition to answering the why question, we will also examine how practitioners, policy-makers, and academics have tackled global development challenges, where they have met success, and where failure has provided key lessons for the future. The course will examine issues of colonialism and contemporary foreign aid. Students will learn about and explore patterns of development across the world, critically evaluate foundational theories of development, and understand the practical challenges and possible solutions to reducing poverty, creating equality, and ensuring good governance. Course assignments will aim to have students practice linking data and evidence with policy innovation, using global datasets to perform statistical analyses. Students will leave this class with an understanding of how development works (and doesn't work) in practice.

The course will survey our planet's greatest sustainability challenges, and some of the possible ways that humankind might overcome each. The course material will include introductory-level science, social science, and business studies material, and give students a basic understanding of the global biological, cultural, social, and economic processes involved in environmental sustainability.

99.9% of all species that have ever inhabited Earth are now extinct, including 12 species of the genus Homo. The threat of human extinction is global, and it is driven by social, economic, technological and political forces operating at global scales. This course will explore several plausible scenarios by which human extinction (or near-extinction) could occur within the next 100 years. In this course, we will study the psychological, social, political, economic and epistemological barriers that frequently derail efforts to avert these catastrophes. We will explore diverse approaches to understanding these risks, strategies that could reduce them, and better ways to think and act as we move into an uncertain future. Students will engage these issues through academic reading, apocalyptic fiction, group discussion and writing. We will consider the role of human agency in the evolution of these risks and their prevention, and our responsibilities as 21st-century citizens.

The relief of pain and suffering is considered one of the primary aims of medicine. However, what suffering is and what physicians must do specifically to prevent or relieve it is not well understood or explained. While suffering may be inherent to the human experience, the ways that suffering is perceived, experienced and addressed are heavily influenced by culture, beliefs and local resources. In this course, we will examine how patients and medical practitioners in different countries make meaning from the experience of pain and suffering of illness. We will draw from narratives and scholarly texts in order to explore how understandings of pain and suffering are shaped by social, cultural, economic and personal factors. Through an examination of personal, cultural and social practices related to suffering and medicine, we also develop skills for reflecting upon how one's culture and personal context influence how they make meaning of illness and suffering.

What ethical norms influence decisions to go to war and the conduct of military operations in war? How are those ethical values reflected in legal rules that govern war? What kinds of security threats or humanitarian dangers justify recourse to force? What are the values and rules that protect civilians and non-combatants in armed conflict? How do these rules apply in non-traditional, asymmetric conflicts between states and terrorist and other non-state groups? How do we determine in which kinds of conflicts to apply the moral and legal framework that governs war?

This course provides an overview of the diverse cultural origins of democratic ideals and practices, their global evolution, the challenges confronting them, and innovations that can make democracy work better. The course places American democracy in a global and comparative perspective, noting the distinctive features and challenges of U.S. democracy and the wide variety of other democratic institutional forms in the world. It deals both with competing visions of what democracy might be and their actual realization around the world. A major element of the course is to consider different conceptual approaches to democracy-direct, representative, participatory, and deliberative. How do different political systems borrow from these concepts to enhance or justify their forms of governance? How are they evolving or reforming in ways that may address the current crisis of democracy and renew public faith in the efficacy and worth of democracy? Democratic institutions are subject to a living dialogue, and we intend to engage the students in these debates, at the levels of both democratic theory and ongoing democratic practice and institutional designs. In the second half of the course, we will examine innovations like Deliberative Polling and institutional reforms of electoral systems and accountability structures that could increase civic participation, reduce polarization, rein in corruption, and improve the functioning and legitimacy of democracy.