International Politics

International Politics, formerly Geopolitics, formerly World Geopolitics, is a Humanities course in the CTY program with no prerequisites. Its course code is POLY (formerly WOGE), and it is offered at Baltimore, Carlisle, Los Angeles, and Saratoga Springs.

Course Description

International Politics provides a basic overview of many of the problems in the world, such as hunger, genocide, and informational security. The course has been criticized or been given apathetically no consideration by different people considering its pacifist style of conflict resolution.

Class History

Carlisle

At CAR.05.1, many complaints were heard about the many useless geography sheets that students were required to complete after looking up large quantities of useless statistics. The same complaints were made next session, with the addition of a number of necessary poetry assignments.

International Politics was taught in Carlisle in 2007 by Dan Mumford and was TA'd by Taku Chakravarti. Taku inspired his own activity, called Taku appreciation. Dan, meanwhile, was in the Peace Corps in Africa and was an actor in an acclaimed World of Warcraft movie. Dan was frequently called D. Mums so as to differentiate between him and Dan Soltis (Diesel/D. Sol/D. Train/Dan). Dan was the RA for all of the guys in International Politics at Carlisle in 2008.1. D. Mums loves the elder god of chaos known as Cthulhu and you 'will grow to love Cthulhu by the end of the session.

At CAR.08.1, there were no more useless worksheets/poetry. The class was very interesting to those who enjoyed history/politics. A word of warning though, many of the arguments do tend to have many different sides with little difference between them and those at either end of the side were usually considered to be wrong by everyone else. As the TA, Megan, said, "There is no black or white there are only shades of gray." Some highlights included a game called Coalitions, a game about International Relations (2008.1 was the first year in which IP A and B failed the game completely resulting in the destruction of the world, a kid named Nate vetoed the peace agreement resulting in utter destruction), reading/discussing the New York Times for the first 2 hours of the day (then discussing the book/other points the teacher wanted to make for the rest of the time (you read the book/various articles during study hall in the evening)), and just the general awesomeness of the class.

At CAR 08.2, the reading/discussing of various NY Times articles resulted in one CTYer losing some of her faith in humanity, as well as other intense class ethical arguments.

At CAR.09.1, Mumford instructed and Cassie was the TA. The week and a half was highly memorable due to Race's inappropriate moments and Claire's un-PC comments. Most memorable of all was the discussion that sprung from an article in the NY Times about illegal immigration, which lasted over an hour and consisted of yelling and disintegrating friendships. Log rolling also proved to be a learning experience.

At CAR.09.2.POLY.A, Maria Vassilieva instructed and Kehan DeSousa was the TA. This dynamic duo consisted of a Georgetown professor and a very knowledgeable coffee/tea loving TA. With the most amount of information squeezed into the smallest amount of time they successfully kept their class interested in the subject. The day began with current events reading and discussion for an hour in the NYTimes, continued into a lecture, and ended with the afternoon class where projects were worked on and more studying was done. With a day to spare there was an inter-class simulation where both classes broke into groups representing made up states. Within this simulation, a made up terrorist organization called S.W.I.N.E F.L.U was admitted to the security council and proceeded to nuke the world.

At CAR.10.2.POLY.A , Maria Vassilieva instructed and Jose Iriate was the TA. Both teachers were great instructors, and Jose's lecture was fast, fluid, and conveyed hard concepts efficiently. The class read the NY times and analyzed, and played several debates, including an incredibly unrealistic Isreali-palestinian peace talk. The class also watched a horrifying documentary called Ghosts of Rwanda. At the end, the class made another simulation where another terrorist group called L.I.O. B.P. attacked the world. Turn that around and you get BP oil.

At CAR.12.1, Taku Chakravarti return to Carlisle as Dan's TA once more. After telling the class (which happened to contain the current Emperor and Jesus, as well as the next year's Emperor)that his real name was not actually Taku, the mad hunt for Taku's true identity began. The class convinced their RAs to hold a Taku Appreciation activity. On Wednesday, the last activity period of the session, Taku Appreciation was held in which the students all created their own satchels, imitating the satchel Taku always carried around, and Emperor Bobby Zipp kissed fellow student, Matthew. In addition, at the very end of the activity, Taku revealed his true identity to the students- Atish.

At CAR 13.1, Kevin Santos Flores joined forces with Dan and spent a lot of the time sitting in the corner of the classroom, making wildly inappropriate jokes, and then laughing at his own jokes. Study hall was very hard because the girls would always go on adventures in the library and laugh every time they made eye contact with Kevin. Apparently, according to sources, Kevin used to TA at LOS for some class or another. The simulation was done with Interpol A (B? [the younger kids]) and was really tense, intense, and horrifying. Friendships were tested. Cthulhu continued his reign and his plush body was thrown around quite a bit. Dan's shirt pocket is the greatest invention known to man. Students had a lot of internal turmoil this session so it was totally weird.

At CAR.14.1, Dan Mumford once again taught Poly B. Considered by some as the best year yet, Poly B had multiple 'important' students: Two Poetry Goddesses, one Jesus Non-Denominational Spiritual Figure, the Oldest Kid on Campus, the BAE, and the first Imperator (although the latter is not always recognized.) Dan impressed the students with multiple simulations, modeling after the real-life events of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Gaza-Palestine conflict. Queen Pegi, the TA, was exceptional and offered valuable insight to the class. During the last Study Hall, Dan brought in his Scorpion lightsaber, wowing most of the class. Again, Cthulhu reigned supreme and the Talking Cthulhu solved many of the personal conflicts with a simple, "Hey! Who's got Cthulhu?!" With some brilliant blends with Poly A, 14.1 was a great class and was found to be important and relevant for many students.

Saratoga Springs

At SAR.05.2, Donald Rumsfeld was put on mock trial for war crimes. He was found not guilty.

At SAR.08.1, one student (also the biggest(both literally and metaphorically) douchebag of the class) discovered that Quake 3 is on the computer he's using, while at Wiecking computer lab(he fell into a destructive obsession over it. He sat on me for taking that computer once, I'm serious). The said student was also nicknamed "Doo-than the Han from Azerbaijan", as a response to his constant racism and calling a fellow classmate a Han. The rest of the class retort by downloading Combat Arms, a free online FPS that his roommate(and one of his many enemies) pulled from an ad in a gaming magazine(its site URL was kept secret). Also, the class was awesome. We saw Karl, the instructor, in a BBC documentary about the Azeri Orange Revolution (he was holding a camera, and was "duly" chased by riot police for documenting the revolt(that's what I think) as he ran around a corner).

LMU

At LOS.09.1.POLY, David Fields instructed and William Hon was the TA. The former is an international traveler, and the latter was studying International Politics. Days included reading from the New York Times, their main textbook, and other books that had good supporting information. They also spent good amounts of time reading The Clash of Civilizations and playing the game of Diplomacy, which Will Wheaton and Courtni Addison won as Britain. Other activities included debates on international issues, mock Security Councils, and cultural simulations.