Political Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now widely used, usually in the form of machine learning, in a broad range of applications including finance, healthcare, law, and social care, as well as playing a role in the arts and humanities as a tool to explore culture. This course introduces students to the issues raised by the development and deployment of AI. The content focuses on providing information and raising debate about the known and predicted effects of artificial intelligence on culture and society.

This course mainly focuses on the China's development in terms of economy, politics and society after 1987's revolution. Lecture topics include the structure of Chinese Communists Party; organization of Chinese government; rural reforms in China; primary-level democracy in China; SOE reform; relationship between Mainland China and Taiwan; development of private economy; industrial upgrading and factory of the world; land finance and investment by the local government; and establishment of social security system. Assessment: participation in class (10%), midterm report (20%), midterm exam(30%) and final exam (40%).

Using Jerusalem as a case study, this course analyzes the politics of planning when municipal management is complicated by religious and ethnic conflict. The course sheds light on issues of urban planning from a comparative perspective, which examines Jerusalem vis-a-vis Belfast, Nicosia, and Johannesburg; a historical perspective, which explores political and urban developments in the 20th century; and a planning perspective, which examines political, governmental, and municipal policies and policy making.

This course explores the relationship between the police, the judicial system, and policy makers in London. Students learn the history of the police force in the UK and the developments that have formed the Metropolitan Police in London today. Topics covered include corruption, race relations, policing major demonstrations and riots, and the impact of government policy on policing. Students explore the politics behind decisions and the framework of the law.

The course explores development and social change in and from the Global South. The course adopts a critical political economy perspective to trace the recent history, politics, and power relations which, following the 1980s debt crisis, saw the Global South integrated into neoliberal globalization. The course starts by locating the globalization project in the Global South and provides two further weeks of critical theory introducing students to the economic and political processes that makes development in the Global South a profoundly unequal, gendered, and racialized project. 

Students pursue an area of study in their major which is not available in the normal framework of the Undergraduate Study Abroad Program. Applicants for such study are expected to develop a sound rationale for their individual research project which requires faculty guidance and must reflect an intensive research project. This course is supervised one hour weekly for the duration of the 11 week semester.