Global Politics: Human Rights and Justice (GPOL) CTY Course Syllabus

Transcription

1 Global Politics: Human Rights and Justice (GPOL) CTY Course Syllabus Day 0: Sunday Evening Introductions: (1 hour) Instructor and TA Introduction to the course Introductions: TA and Instructor. Students introduce themselves to the class and say why they are taking this class. They also complete a brief questionnaire about their background in politics, their international exposure, their foreign language reading abilities, and their areas of interest. Roster, have them sign the roster Sign CTY honor code and computer code Day 1: Monday Morning Overview of CTY Policies Introductory Remarks Pre-Assessment Test Overview of the 20 th century s benchmarks in the worldwide human rights movement Ice breakers Students take one hour to complete a pre-assessment test. Class rules: go over class rules, conduct, and standards. Ask TA to post class rules in the classroom. (Nerey) Talk about syllabus, reading, addresses, and blog (Vagisha) Talk about class projects and blog rules. (Nerey) A 45-min interactive lecture on what human rights are and a historical account on the concept. Understanding the principles outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Understanding the distinction between positive and negative rights. Critical analysis of the Declaration In the first hour, students read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [original document]: available online at In the second hour, they are divided into four groups and each group has to assess the Declaration in terms of: a) how it compares to the US Constitution and b) Which of the rights in the Declaration are positive and which are negative. Evening Reading Reading Assignment: Forsyth chapter 1, *Charles Taylor, "A World Consensus on Human Rights?" Dissent, Summer 1996 [posted online] Blog time (8:30-9:00)

2 Day 2: Tuesday Morning Review of types of human rights Who is the human in human rights? Understanding the state of human rights today A 15-min discussion on the first blog post of the course. A 30-min interactive lecture on the declaration of human rights, animated video, and the critical analysis of it, on the structure of the UN, the role of the Security Council, and the Human Rights Commission. Break A 45-min lecture on various types of human rights in different national contexts. Group Activity: Universal Declaration of Human Rights exercise. Ask students to form triads amongst themselves and ask them to think about basic needs of women, children, displaced persons, perpetrators, and individuals in post-conflict situations (thematic weaving). After they do that, ask one student to read out various articles from the declaration. After he/she reads each article, ask the rest of the students to talk about the basic needs that are being addressed in that clause. Group activity: research human rights on web-based material. Ask the TA to pull together about a dozen articles on human rights from the 1950 and 2000s. In groups, the students will read these articles and look for patterns of how HR are defined, violated, protected over time. Evening Reading Forsythe chapter 7; Matthews, Jessica (1997) Power Shift Foreign Policy 76 (1): Day 3: Wednesday Morning Review the information obtained from the group activity. Who sets human rights standards? Who implements these established standards? Understanding social and legal accountability A 15-min discussion on the second blog post. A 45-min lecture on the role of nongovernmental organizations. Nerey lecture on NGOs, UN, and military outsourcing. Group activity: (how criminal courts and tribunals work) Bring a real news article of human rights violation (i.e. killing/ torture of a student in Venezuela). Form five groups other students from the same university and victim s family, military officers, government bureaucrats, NGO, and a hearing body. Ask them to justify their stand. Divide the class into five groups. Have one group read, Forsythe chapter 3; the second group will read, Hathaway, Oona. Two Cheers for International Law. The Wilson Quarterly. 27 (4): p.50-64, the third group will read, Abdullahi An-Na`im, "State Responsibility under International Human Rights Law to Change Religious and Customary Laws," in Human Rights of Women, ed. Rebecca Cook; the 4 th group will read Fred Halliday, "Relativism and Universalism in Human Rights: The Case of the Islamic Middle East," Political Studies 43 (1995); and the fifth will read, Partha Chatterjee, "Religious Minorities and the Secular State: Reflections on an Indian Impasse," Public Culture 8 (1995). Evening Reading Have each group summarize the readings and present it to other groups.

3 Day 4: Thursday Morning Universalism vs. Relativism Competing perspectives A 15-min discussion on the third blog post A 45-min lecture on competing perspectives on human rights (debriefing on violence against women) Debate: universalism vs. relativism (relative to children s rights) Understanding various causes of repression Reading: Forsyth chapter 4 Group activity: search for recent human rights violations around the world and discuss causes of these situations. Evening Reading Reading: "Humanitarian Intervention and North- South Politics in the '90s," special issue of Middle East Report (March-April/May-June 1994). Day 5: Friday July 4 Morning Humanitarian intervention and human rights Understanding the complexities of human rights violations and relating them to existing theoretical paradigms of international relations realism, constructivism, Marxism, feminism, and liberalism. A 15-min discussion on the 4 th blog post A 45-min lecture on humanitarian intervention in various contexts A 30-min discussion on difficulties of humanitarian intervention. Debate: to intervene or not to intervene? This should be based on the historical case study on Kosovo. Reading: Forsythe chapter 9. Small group activity: Students will be divided into 5 groups. The thematic area will be post-conflict reconstruction of either Kosovo or Sierra Leone. Each group will be assigned a major theoretical area (realism, constructivism, liberalism, Marxism, and feminism). They will be asked to read the Forsythe chapter and analyze these cases based on their theories. The TA will have to pull out variables from each case and see how they fit into various theories. Then she will design worksheets that the students could fill out. At the end, the students will discuss their theoretical interpretations of cases and teach each other. Day 6: Sunday Evening First in-class reflective essay In-class, open notes, essay (3-5 pages) 1 hour. Reading Assignment: Amartya Sen, Freedoms and needs in the New Republic (Jan 10 & 17, 1994), pp Amartya Sen, More than 100 Million women are missing in New York Review of Books, vol 37, no.20 (December 20, 1990), pp.1-13.

4 Day 7: Monday Morning Economic explanations for human rights violation Human rights tradeoffs for economic progress Human rights and globalization Economic vs. political rights Images of economic repression A 15-min discussion on the 5 th blog post. A 45-min lecture on economic explanations of human rights abuses. Introduction to the group presentation (three-students in one-group) on comparative cases of HR abuses. Pick cases from binder. Students will search for various images of economic repression in media sources. They will put together a silent presentation of these images. They will discuss the reactions to these images once everyone has presented. Evening Reading Social Justice and Human Rights by Joseph Stiglitz Day 8: Tuesday Morning Political explanations for human rights abuses Reading up on leading cases of the European court of human rights A 15-min discussion on the 6 th blog post A 45-min lecture on political explanations, justice vs. peace. A/V piece: video clips, audio clips on tribunals. Group activity: Hostage situation. M. Hoyt, 'The Mozote Massacre' in The Columbia Journalism Review (Jan./Feb 1993), pp Read Milgram, some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority, Human Relations, 18, 1 (1965): Evening Working on group presentations Prepare for group presentations groups 1 & 2 Day 9: Wednesday Morning Psychological explanations for human rights abuses Reading: individual propensities, socialization and becoming part of a group, Working on group presentations Evening Movie Hotel Rwanda A 15-min discussion on the 7 th blog post A 45-min lecture on psychological explanations Group presentations: 1 & 2 Group Activity: in-group/out-group simulation the class will be divided into 2 groups. One group will be given black arm bands and the other will be given red arm bands. The TA will develop identification rituals and symbols for each group. After the identities have been determined, the class will play competitive games. Talk about ethnic conflict in the U.S. between immigrant population and American citizens. Day 10: Thursday Morning Ideological explanations for human rights abuses -Elite ideologies: national security, mass ideologies Reviewing the week s material, working on group presentation A 30-min discussion on the 8 th blog post and Hotel Rwanda. A 45-min lecture on ideological explanations Group presentations: 3, 4, and 5 Peer evaluation: each student will give feedback on the group presentation and will read the short paper produced by those presentations. They will learn how to critique arguments and provide constructive feedback on presentation skills, substance of the presentation, writing style, and data.

5 Evening Reading Assignment VAW Charlotte Bunch, "Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re- Vision of Human Rights," monograph, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Work on their newspaper clipping assignment. Day 11: Friday Morning Violence against women Discussion of VAW, what it is, different forms of it, prevalence (cross cultural comparisons), and discussion of policies. Looking into policies that are in place to control VAW A 15-min discussion on the 9 th blog post Students in groups of two will bring two substantive newspaper clippings on the assigned area of VAW. Each group will talk about what they found and the instructor will write each theme on the board. At the end, we will discuss the various facets of VAW pay gaps, FGM, sexual slavery/prostitution, cultural patriarchy, and rape/sexual assault. Talk about UN SC 1325 (Nerey) and video. A 30-min lecture on the prevalence of VAW with cross cultural comparisons and data from the developed and developing countries. A student will be assigned to recite a part of cutting a rose Watch a 30-min clip of trading women documentary. Research international policy instruments such as CEDAW, Beijing platform and also look at domestic policy measures. Students will be assigned various countries that they should research and find out their VAW policies. Discussion and critique of policies Evening Reading Read chosen parts of The Princess and Nine Parts of Desire these readings will take the focus of honor killings in the Middle East and in Western countries. The students will listen to the BBC special investigation on honor killings in ethnic enclaves in the UK. Day 12: Sunday Evening Second reflective essay and reading assignment for Monday In-class, open-notes essay (3-5 pages); reading assignment on children s rights: Documents (NY: CSHR, 2001) read the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Daniel Hoffman, Brazilian Apartheid: Street Kids and the Struggle for Urban Space, in Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent, eds. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), pp (VISTA) Day 13: Monday Morning Torture: Convention on torture; Can torture be justified during times when national security is threatened? More on torture and introduction to final assignment Evening Working on final-day projects on how to get involved as an individual in protecting human rights A 15-min discussion on the 12 th blog post. A 45-min lecture on torture, security, and war. A short video clip of Abu Ghraib, Bucca, and Guantanamo Bay. Class debate: Torture during war a necessary evil? Students will be assigned a particular area of human rights abuses and they will have to come up with creative ways to protect rights in their area as individuals. They will be encouraged with be as practical and hands-on as possible

6 Day 14: Tuesday Morning The refugee problem A 15-min discussion on the 13 th blog post A 45-min lecture on refugee issue political, economic, and social aspects of the issue; the durable solutions of the UN, and the future of refugee handling. Evening The refugee problem Working on final-day projects Research on the group activity for Thursday Activity: divide the class into about 10 groups. Five of the groups would be different countries (a mix of rich and poor nations) and the rest would be collectives (Hutus from Rwanda, Albanians from Kosovo, Tamils from SL, etc.) asking for asylum from these countries. The refugees would have to make their case in front of these countries and the countries have to give reasons for their acceptance or denial of refugees. After this, discuss the durable solution of the UN and critique it. Day 15: Wednesday Morning Revision on torture Preparing for the debate Working on final day project The torture debate Evening Working on final day project Day 16: Thursday Morning Post conflict reconstruction Reading: World Bank report on post conflict reconstruction, UN report on Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Discussion on reading and concepts. Nerey: Presentation on Resolution 1325 The refugee problem Preparing for final presentations Evening Final presentations Group presentations on how to make a difference. Discussion on each project, is it viable? If not, how can we change it? Day 17: Friday Morning Why does it matter to me? And how can I make a difference? Group presentations on how to make a difference. Discussion on each project, is it viable? If not, how can we change it?