This course will explore the forces that led to the 9/11 attacks and the policies the United States adopted in response. We will examine the phenomenon of modern terrorism, the development of the al Qai'da ideology, and the process by which individuals radicalize towards violence.

As a state with one of the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons Russia is a key participant of nuclear non-proliferation regime and defines nuclear arms control as a priority of its foreign policy. This course will discover the logic and the frames of Russian nuclear arms control policies. You will learn the historical background and the modern context of bilateral US-Russian relations in nuclear arms control and understand how these relations influence the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. You will get the basic tools for analyzing Russian defence and security policy in regards to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Upon the completion this course the students will… ...be able to - analyze the actions of a state from the point of view of the present treaties on nuclear arms control; - come up with their own opinion on the problem commented by the arms control experts; - make arguments supporting their position in discussions of nuclear arms control. ...get to know - the technical, political and strategic aspects of agreements on nuclear arms control; - the content of arms control treaties in which Russia participates; - the trustworthy informational resources dedicated to the problem of nuclear arms control. ...be familiar with - the special terminology in the area of arms control; - the modern state and the perspectives of international policy regarding nuclear arms control; - the basics of Russia’s nuclear arms control policy.

Security and safety challenges rank among the most pressing issues of modern times. Challenges such as, cyber-crime, terrorism, and environmental disasters impact the lives of millions across the globe. These issues also rank high on the agenda of politicians, international organizations and businesses. They also feature prominently in the public conscience and in governmental policies. In the current, interconnected world, security challenges are becoming increasingly complex. Facilitated by developments as globalization and the spread of networked and hyper-connected technologies, new safety and security challenges arise and impact local, national, regional and international levels, which dramatically increases their complexity and scale. As such, solutions to contemporary security challenges require a wide array of actors operating on multiple levels of governance. The course will introduce you to the broad theme of security and safety in an increasingly complex world. Together we will search for answers to important questions: what is security and safety? How can we understand complex modern-day security and safety challenges? And how do we deal with such challenges? This course combines scholarly inquiry from multiple disciplines (ranging from terrorism studies, to crisis management, to medical science) with real-life cases to explore and understand complex modern-day safety and security challenges.

This course will select six most outstanding issues in contemporary Korean politics and will engage in an in-depth, interactive inquiry of those issue. They include Korean politics in history, institutional setting of Korean politics, and dynamics of political culture in Korea, profiles of political leadership, myth and reality of the developmental state and the Korean economic miracle, and debates on Korean unification. The course will expose students to contending theories and empirical reality at first hand. After completing this course, learners will be able to 1. Grasp the most salient and timely aspects of Korean politics.. 2. Place South Korean politics in comparative perspectives. 3. Digest a delicate mix of theory and practice regarding Korean politics. 4. Come up with new interpretations of political development in South Korea. 5. Most importantly renew their genuine interests in Korea and Korean politics.

How are international power relations changing and how can global peace and stability be maintained? This course familiarizes you with some main theories of international relations, shows how the global order is gradually changing and discusses how selected international and regional organizations contribute to the maintenance of global peace and security. You learn what research findings tell us in terms of the capacity of international organizations and actors to help prevent or stop violent conflict, what tools are used to negotiate agreements and how foundations for sustainable peace are best created. We will also focus on the role of the European Union in terms of diplomacy and efforts to prevent conflict, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the contribution of organizations such as the African Union to the prevention of conflict and war. We will study the United Nations Security Council and see in which ways its membership could be adapted to more accurately reflect the power relations of the current global order. Through quizzes and exercises testing your knowledge of these subjects, you will understand crucial concepts and get insights into how the academic study of international relations and international organization contributes to the search for global stability and peace in practice.

This is a course on social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate harmful ones. The course teaches how to measure social norms and the expectations that support them, and how to decide whether they cause specific behaviors. The course is a joint Penn-UNICEF project, and it includes many examples of norms that sustain behaviors like child marriage, gender violence and sanitation practices. This is Part 1 of the Social Norms, Social Change series. In these lectures, I introduce all the basic concepts and definitions, such as social expectations and conditional preferences, that help us distinguish between different types of social practices like customs, descriptive norms and social norms. Expectations and preferences can be measured, and these lectures explain how to measure them. Measurement is crucial to understanding the nature of the practice you are facing, as well as whether an intervention was or was not successful, and why. In Part 2, we will put into practice all we have learned in Part 1. New! Please use this link for a 30% discount on the recommended book that accompanies this course! https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780190622053/?cc=us&lang=en&promocode=AAFLYG6

When do governments deserve our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? This course explores the main answers that have been given to this question in the modern West. We start with a survey of the major political theories of the Enlightenment: Utilitarianism, Marxism, and the social contract tradition. In each case, we begin with a look at classical formulations, locating them in historical context, but then shift to the contemporary debates as they relate to politics today. Next, we turn to the rejection of Enlightenment political thinking, again exploring both classical and contemporary formulations. The last part of the course deals with the nature of, and justifications for, democratic politics, and their relations to Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment political thinking. In addition to exploring theoretical differences among the various authors discussed, considerable attention is devoted to the practical implications of their competing arguments. To this end, we discuss a variety of concrete problems, including debates about economic inequality, affirmative action and the distribution of health care, the limits of state power in the regulation of speech and religion, and difficulties raised by the emerging threat of global environmental decay.

The Global Diplomacy course is a unique offering to the MOOC environment. Bringing together cutting edge research in the broad fields of Diplomatic and International Studies, award winning distance learning delivery and the instructors previous experience of delivering a successful MOOC. Please see the volume Global Diplomacy: Theories, Types and Models authored with Dr Alison Holmes, (Westview, 2016), and the Understanding Research Methods MOOC from Coursera. The Global Diplomacy MOOC has a direct heritage in the University of London International Academy/SOAS Global Diplomacy MA Programme launched in April 2013 which have attracted hundreds of students from around the world. The Global Diplomacy MA Programme is provided by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy which has been teaching postgraduate courses in Diplomacy for over twenty five years. After completing the 'Global Diplomacy' MOOC, learners will have: 1. The ability to demonstrate a critical understanding of the nature and development of global diplomacy, drawing on a variety of relevant contributing disciplines in the broad field of International Studies. 2. An understanding of changes in diplomatic practices and procedures and the relationship of those changes to contemporary politics. 3. A sound grounding in both theoretical and empirical approaches to debates in diplomacy so that students have been exposed to the and skills needed to analyse global diplomacy. 4. knowledge of issues in global diplomacy in historical and contemporary contexts.

Terrorism has arguably been one of the defining factors of our age. It frequently makes headlines, threatening or attacking governments, private business and ordinary citizens. And in many parts of the world, it has been one of the most important threats to peace, security and stability. But what does this exactly mean? What is the nature of this threat? Who or what is threatened, how, by whom and why? What can be done about it or how can we at least limit the impact of terrorism and make sure that terrorists do not make headlines and manage to scare us? These are just a handful of questions that will be addressed in this course that consists of three parts. First it focuses on the essence of terrorism as an instrument to achieve certain goals, in addition to an exploration of this phenomenon and the difficulties in defining it. The second part provides an overview of the state of the art in (counter) terrorism studies. Since ‘9/11’ terrorism studies have grown exponentially, reflecting the rise in perceived threats. But what has academia come up with? What theories, assumptions and conventional wisdom has it produced that could be of help in understanding terrorism and dealing with it? The most interesting results are examined and compared with empirical evidence with the aim to either stress their importance or to debunk them as myths. The final part looks into the implications and possibilities for policy making. The course ends with a module specifically designed to address one of today's most topical issue: the foreign fighter phenomenon.

Sports play a giant role in contemporary society worldwide. But few of us pause to think about the larger questions of money, politics, race, sex, culture, and commercialization that surround sports everywhere. This course draws on the tools of anthropology, sociology, history, and other disciplines to give you new perspectives on the games we watch and play. It's the new and improved version of Professor Orin Starn's original "Sports and Society" for Coursera, which drew more than 40,000 students. We will focus on both popular sports like soccer (or “football,” as anyone outside America calls it), basketball, and baseball, and also lesser-known ones like mountain-climbing and fishing. You will never watch or think about sports in the same way again.