Political, Social Sciences & Society   

Lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories are used to deny reality and promote authoritarian interests in America today. This course identifies the anti-democratic truth-killers, examines how they create and amplify disinformation and manipulate the population, and discusses how to win the war on truth. We will rely on the book, On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy (McIntyre, 2023), and other sources.

We will explore how healthcare is distributed in the United States. Who gets what? From whom? Who pays for it? Why? How did we get to this uncomfortable, inefficient, and unjust place? Can our bewilderingly complicated and widely criticized system be reformed to deliver high-quality care ethically, effectively, and economically?

Until the Holocaust, a large majority of European Jews lived in the eastern part of the continent. Ashkenazi Jews were welcomed in Poland when they were expelled from England, France, and German lands in the Middle Ages. Sephardic Jews were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire when they fled the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. But as western Jews were gradually emancipated beginning in the 18th century, east European states like Romania and Russia resisted. Antisemitism emerged. Its most violent forms before the Holocaust were the pogroms in the Russian Empire.