We’re in our last week of content for the semester. Today we’re discussing the controversy of great powers conflict and Thursday we look at our final chapter from Battle for the Arab Spring, focusing on the rise of Islamist politics and supplementing that with some readings on ISIS and the counter-revolution.
But first, we have our cases from last Thursday to adjudicate:
Defense arguments–
Prosecution arguments–
As a class, we’ll analyze these and try to impartially predict if the Syrian regime would be convicted of war crimes charges.
Then I would like us to spend a good twenty minutes expressing our thoughts on the four discussion questions in Controversies in Globalization. After discussing those questions, I’d like you to spend about ten minutes with a partner researching China’s stake in the Syria conflict and sharing some ideas you have about how Syria might or might not be a “flashpoint” between the US and China.
Add questions you would like to bring up on Thursday in the comments section below, relevant to the topics of that day’s class.
Thursday’s Class:
We’ll use the first 20 minutes of class after the quiz for course evaluations.
There are a number of topics and questions I would like you to comment on in the written section:
- Which is your most favorite project or assignment? Least favorite?
- What changes would you propose for the digital projects?
- How helpful have the perspectives on globalization and the global issues in CIG been for you in understanding the role of globalization in the Middle Eastern revolutions? Are there other approaches you think might help you or your classmates to better understand that relationship?
- What kinds of expectations did you come to the class with? What parts of the class met your expectations? What parts didn’t?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how prepared do you feel to engage in thoughtful deliberations about the Middle East today?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you feel you understand a spectrum of points of view on the Middle East after taking this class?
After the evaluations, we’ll watch this Vice video about ISIS and the Syria-Iraq border:
There weren’t any comments to raise topics to discuss, but I’m sure there are enough ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions for us to pose in class.