Political, Social Sciences & Society   

This course guides members on a deep dive into some particular sets of propaganda practices by different regimes throughout history. In particular we will focus on Imperial Japan, North Korea, Post-Soviet Russia, and the United States. Members will gain a basic familiarity with the tools and practices of propaganda and specific knowledge about the character of propaganda activities of those four regimes.

From colonial times to the present, America has benefited from visionary women and men in law, politics, music, literature, journalism, medicine, science, religion, and social reform. From a list of more than a thousand people, the course presents one hundred profiles of both well-known and lesser-known heroes such as Jonas Salk, Clara Barton, Alice Hamilton, Mary Bickerdyke, Molly Ivins, Edward R. Murrow, Mary Heaton Vorse, and William Trotter.

Black children and adults are greatly over-represented in traffic and pedestrian stops, frisks, searches, uses of force, and arrests by police in urban areas. This course will give a brief history of the problem of racial disparities and discrimination in Pittsburgh and other cities, provide current data, and analyze causes, effects, and solutions. Many sources will be used, including a RAND study in 2023, reports by Dr. Bangs in 2024-2025, and investigations by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Note: This course will be hybrid, meeting in the Community Engagement Center in Homewood and on Zoom.

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.

In this interactive online discussion course, we will explore famous philosophical thought experiments and their practical applications. How does the trolley problem relate to the question of whether self-driving cars should be programmed to protect passengers inside the car or the pedestrians outside the car if brakes fail? What does John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” thought experiment teach us about how to set up a just society? Participants will receive text handouts which we will study during the class sessions. Come join the conversation!

 

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?

The Industrial Age experienced in America brought numerous challenges to the companies that emerged and ultimately to the workers. This course will trace aspects of industrialization, the emergence of unions, and the immigration that occurred throughout the 1860s into the early 1920s. Most specifically, this course focuses on the coal industry. How did immigration solve the need for workers in mulitple industries? What factors contributed to the Industrial Age's tremendous growth? What stalled the unionization movement throughout the Industrial Age and beyond? These questions and others will be discussed.

This course will examine one of the most fraught episodes in modern history: the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a post-Cold War era. Viewed largely from the U.S. perspective, we will explore the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf War, the AIDS crisis, and the profound political and domestic transformations that occurred during the Clinton and first Bush administrations. Both men were critical figures in the development of a “new world order,” leaving the United States the lone superpower but one whose people were increasingly dissatisfied.

This course describes the structure and function of the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, the Commonwealth, and other inter-governmental organizations. How do these organizations work toward peace and prosperity in the world? How do countries use them to achieve their policy goals? What are the challenges of cooperating on an international scale?

This course will first look at the history of environmental law in the United States, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its mandate to regulate and enforce the standards sought by Congress, and the relevant case law to date. The relationship between the environment and the economy will be explored, with an emphasis on the environmental legacy of heavy manufacturing (such as steel in the Mon Valley) and its impact on the local economy. Finally, we will look at international environmental litigation in the Hague and what the cases in the International Court of Justice say regarding environmental justice.

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.

This course will examine the life, work, and enduring legacy of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, both during their time in the White House and beyond. We will delve into their political careers, post-presidential humanitarian efforts, and impact on American society and the world. Through readings and critical analysis, we will explore the complexities of their legacy and their contributions to issues such as human rights, democracy, and public health.

Our democracy relies upon a vigorous and independent media, as our founders realized when they added the First Amendment to the Constitution. But mass media has changed over the years and has become much less a force in the conduct of our national affairs. This course offers an insight into the development of media from Gutenberg to the internet. How and why consolidation has lessened the number of media voices and the effect that has had on our democratic institutions will be subjects of discussion in this course.

Climate change and related environmental issues look like issues of technology and science. That technology, however, is shaped by economic and political systems, which, in turn, are rooted in industrial civilization founded upon the cheap power made possible by burning fossil fuels. We will examine all these aspects of climate change and fossil fuel use to gain an understanding of this most critical issue of our time.

This course will review the political history of Pennsylvania since its founding by William Penn. We will explore the state's structure of government and compare its major public policies (taxation, welfare, reproductive rights, environmental regulation, direct democracy, and criminal justice) with those of other states in our federal system. We will analyze the impact of the state's political culture, parties, interest groups, and demographic trends on public policy and on recent elections to state and federal office.

Society has many systems for detaining individuals depending on the motives for imposing detention: deterrence, isolation, rehabilitation, or retribution. We will compare the various systems of detention including adult criminal, juvenile, civil commitment of the mentally ill, and pretrial detention. We will try to find out how the best features of various systems can be used to achieve society's goals. News accounts of recent cases will serve to frame our discussion.