This course is most aptly called Thinking About Politics. It aims to examine a range of contemporary issues and to explore the political and philosophical conflicts and controversies that those issues raise. So, for example, we might examine the concepts of patriotism and explore the tensions that arise between it and such other concepts as democracy or freedom or dissent or security. Readings will be drawn both from contemporary sources and classic political thought.

This course introduces students to positive political theory, a rigorous set of tools that helps clarify key questions in political science. Through examples drawn from all aspects of the political process (from elections to lawmaking to regulation) as well as from everyday life (where should we go for dinner?) and Hollywood (Russell Crowe and Reese Witherspoon as political scientists?), we will study how the rules of the game affect the decisions politicians make as well as the policy outcomes we observe. NOTE: YOU MUST SIGN UP FOR A RECITATION WHEN REGISTERING FOR THIS COURSE.

Data analysis has become a key part of many fields including politics, business, law, and public policy. This course covers the fundamentals of data analysis, giving students the necessary statistical skills to understand and critically analyze contemporary political, legal, and policy puzzles. Lectures will focus on the theory and practice of quantitative analysis, and lab sessions will guide students through the particulars of statistical software. Core topics include descriptive statistics, probability, hypothesis testing, and linear regression. RESTRICTION: Students who have taken ECON 230, PSCI 205, PSY/CSP 211, STAT 212, STAT 213, or STAT 214 may not take the course. Must have laptop on which you can run R and R Studio.

This course introduces students to the questions, concepts, and analytical approaches of political scientists and emphasizes careful reading and analytical writing. For its subject matter, this class focuses on the tension between majority rule and minority rights in the American political tradition. Topics include tyranny of the majority, slavery, constitutional design, representation, the paradox of voting, collective action problems, political ambition, the development of the American party system, congressional organization, racism and civil rights, women's rights, substantive due process, the politics of contraception and abortion and LGBTQ rights, partisan polarization, and democratic erosion. Readings are drawn from classic texts in American thought—the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, speeches by Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, Supreme Court cases—as well as from books and articles written by contemporary political scientists. Written requirements include a midterm, a final exam, and several short papers on the assigned readings.

This course is about the politics of racial subordination and emancipation in the United States. We begin by thinking about different explanations of the rise, dynamics, and persistence of racial domination in the United States and of the cultural and political challenges to it. We will pay special attention to the Great Migration, the subsequent emergence of blacks as an important constituency of the Democratic Party, the Civil Rights Movement, and the role of race in structuring current party divisions. Next, we will examine the politics of black communities. Topics include the legacy of demobilization of the Civil Rights Movement and the channeling of political activity into electoral institutions; the politics of urban regimes; the challenge to political solidarity posed by increasing social economic and social inequality within the black community; the Black Lives Matter movement; and debates about the effectiveness of identity-based, class based, and coalitional strategies of political mobilization. In conclusion we will reflect upon the differences between the nature and dynamics of racial subordination today compared with the past and what, if any, prospects for change there are.

Through the lens of the Constitution and Supreme Court cases, examines the structure of the American legal system (both separation of powers at the federal level and the authority of, and relationship among, states and the federal government), as well as the nature of civil rights of citizens.

Is consensus overrated? In this seminar course we will study the role of disagreement in a democratic society. Topics will include the causes and consequences of political polarization, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity on college campuses, and practical tools for managing disagreements.

An introduction to the legal foundations of the biomedical healthcare system; topics include national health reform, bioethics, the right to health care, genetic discrimination, and access to reproductive care. Primary law (judicial opinions, legislation) comprises the bulk of the reading assignments; students will learn how to brief cases and interpret statutes. Pre-requisite: PHLT 116 highly recommended.

Through intensive reading and discussion, we examine the politics and history of American cities. While we read scholarship drawing on the experiences of an array of cities--including Chicago, New York, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, New Haven, Atlanta, Buffalo, and Charlotte--our emphasis is on commonalities in the urban experience as well as on systematic differences. We analyze the relationship of cities to their hinterlands in the early stages of urban development, the rise of ethnic neighborhoods, suburbanization, industrialization, de-industrialization, housing and jobs, concentrated poverty, and population changes. Race, ethnicity, and class are central to this course, not only in understanding changes in neighborhoods but also in the nature of politics and governmental arrangements.

This course provides a foundational understanding of U.S. environmental law, with a focus on existing federal environmental statutes and regulatory programs. Topics include the common law origins of environmental law, the historical genesis of federal regulation over human impact on the environment, the enduring role of the States in environmental regulation, along with an overview of critical federal environmental laws (such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and CERCLA/Superfund). Students will be introduced to how agencies implement and enforce these laws and how judicial decisions shape them. The course also touches on how and whether these decades-old laws are suited to address 21st-century challenges like climate change and environmental injustice.

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the possibility of a green economy. This course examines the potential for "green markets," focusing on three drivers-social, political, and economic-that can both constrain firms and potentially condition whether issues of environment and sustainability can be exploited as a means for competitive advantage. Among issues covered will be demand and willingness to pay for green goods, the roles of NGOs and investors, regulation and its alternatives, firm reputation and product differentiation, supply chain management, and green production processes. Special attention will be given to the need of firms to deal with climate change now and in the future.

An examination of discrimination from a social scientific perspective. Topics covered include defining discrimination, types of discrimination under the law, testing for discrimination, discrimination experiments, and a survey of what social scientists have discovered about discrimination in the areas of policing, bail, retail sales, automobile sales, and home mortgages. Although there is considerable time devoted to lecture, students are encouraged to participate.

In recent decades a number of important intellectual intersections have emerged between political science and economics. The course will explore these intersections as they appear in the work of several scholars who have won the Nobel Prize in economics. Our aim is to explore the analytical, explanatory and normative implications of this work in hopes of discerning lessons for thinking about enduring political issues and institutions. Some prior course work in economics or political science will be helpful but is not required.

Game theory is a systematic study of strategic situations. It is a theory that helps us analyze economic and political strategic issues, such as behavior of individuals in a group, competition among firms in a market, platform choices of political candidates, and so on. We will develop the basic concepts and results of game theory, including simultaneous and sequential move games, repeated games and games with incomplete information. The objective of the course is to enable the student to analyze strategic situations on his/her own. The emphasis of the course is on theoretical aspects of strategic behavior, so familiarity with mathematical formalism is desirable.

Consider the litany of problems we humans encounter across the globe: Environmental exploitation and degradation, dire poverty, profound and growing political-economic inequality, deep, often deadly divisions within nations along, among other dimensions, race gender and class, massive migration of populations (whether voluntary or not) across borders. The list goes on. It is daunting to the point of being intellectually and practically debilitating. For citizens, activists, government officials, and economic actors it is difficult to know where and how to start thinking about responses. In the face of such difficulties (and others) we urgently require responses that are both effective and justifiable. In order to identify and implement them we must not only understand how markets or individual elements of political systems work, or even how the various elements of our political and economic systems interact. We also must be able to think carefully about our obligations to our fellow human beings, and the values that we ultimately want our shared world to insatiate and be anchored by. Changing the world (let alone "saving" it!), then, requires a deeply interdisciplinary approach.

This course will be focused on helping students to develop the skills to bring ethical, microeconomic, and game theoretic analysis to bear on fundamental problems like those we mention above. Students should leave the course with a better understanding not just of how our political-economic practices and institutions do work - but also how they could work, how they should work, and how to make them work that way. (Offered every fall, teaching alternates between philosophy and politics, but all offerings satisfy the same requirements)
[Prerequisite: One previous course in Philosophy]

Students in the Local Law and Politics Internships work 10-15 hours per week in one of a variety of internships in policy, politics and law in the Rochester area. Possible internship placements include the district offices of state and federal legislators, the City of Rochester municipal government, policy research and advocacy organizations, and the Monroe County District Attorney's and Public Defender's offices. Students supplement their hands-on learning with a series of short research-based writing assignments related to their internships. Contact professor Stu Jordan to learn how to apply. Students must have a B average and must be a sophomore, junior or senior to be eligible.

These internships provide an opportunity to learn experientially one or more of the following: how government functions; how public policies are created, adopted and implemented; and how political campaigns work. Students intern in Congress, the executive branch, party campaign committees, and lobbying and advocacy groups. Please contact Professor Stu Jordan for more information.