Class Schedule
Fall 2025, Session 1 | August 25, 2025 - October 11, 2025
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Daniel Arnon | 3 |
Designed as an introductory course to the field of international security, this course has three main aims: first, to provide an overview of the major theories, concepts, and debates in international security. Second, to lay the foundations for elective ISS classes. Third, to introduce current and future security challenges faced by the U.S. and its allies. The course will tackle questions such as: what is "security" and how should we study and measure it? How have security problems changed over time? What are the causes of war and peace? When should states employ force? And what are the prospects for national and international security in the 21st century.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Frank Gonzalez | 3 |
Ultimately, all political phenomena, including issues related to international security, boil down to interactions between humans - usually, groups of humans. As such, people's lay theories and beliefs about how humans think and make decisions in groups significantly affect how they approach political issues, including those related to international security. Research on group psychology offers a means of informing, critically evaluating, and improving these lay theories and beliefs. Decades of research have been done in the fields of social and political psychology on how groups of people interact with one another, why interactions between and within groups often become hostile or counter-productive, and how interactions between and within groups can be adjusted in ways that encourage cooperation and peace. In this course, we will seek to understand, broadly: why do groups sometimes conflict and sometimes cooperate with one another? We will start by broadly reviewing what psychologists have discovered regarding inter- and intra-group behavior. Students will then learn about what small-scale laboratory research has told us about when and why conflict versus cooperation might result from group interactions. Next, we will spend considerable time examining how this research has been applied to understanding a range of international security issues, including war and peace, ethnic conflict, terrorism, genocide, international trade, foreign aid, immigration, and refugees. Assignments will require students to critically evaluate their own as well as others' understandings of how group psychology influences contemporary international security issues and come up with concrete, novel ways in which group psychology might inform efforts to handle international security issues now and in the future.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Jeff Kucik | 3 |
The course will examine connections between politics and economics beyond the single nation state, with an emphasis on policy implications in the 21st century. Students will be introduced to; free market (AKA liberal, neoclassical); institutionalist (AKA pluralist, multi-centric organizational); and historical materialist (AKA Marxist, structuralist). Each perspective will be presented by specifying its particular thought 'model', underlying assumptions, and application to real-world issues. The course will compare and contrast these perspectives with respect to core global political economy (GPE) issues such as trade, finance, transnational corporations, development and environmental sustainability.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Jennifer Cyr | 3 |
This course examines the relationship between democracy and security. Each week, students will learn about how democracy interacts one of many different security challenges. We will conceive of security broadly and, therefore, will consider how democracies fare when it comes to: war, crime, human security, corruption, and the military as an institution.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Tolga Turker | 3 |
Political Islamism has been a focus of policy makers in the post- 9/11 era. However, before concrete strategies can be formulated to deal with this concern, the nature and dynamics of Islamist mobilization itself must be understood. To do that, this course will benefit from the knowledge generated through years of study in different parts of the world and in various disciplines in identifying: What is it? What causes it? What motivates an individual to join an Islamist group and possibly use violence? Under what conditions will these groups moderate, and when will they radicalize? Overall this course is designed as a resource for students of political science and international security studies as well as broad audiences in the social sciences seeking to understand the emergence, evolution, and possible futures of what commonly called political Islam.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Robert Wells | 3 |
Analysis of the Cold War; Congressional-Executive clashes over foreign policy control; approaches to policy analysis. Graduate-level requirements include additional assignment/paper.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Paul Schuler | 3 |
This course considers the national interests, issues and conflicts, relations, and influence of domestic politics in interstate relations in East Asia.
Fall 2025, Session 2 | October 20, 2025 - Deember 7, 2025
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Kirssa Ryckman | 3 |
This course addresses the political causes and consequences of the use of terrorist violence as well as the variety of methods employed by the state in response to this violence. Graduate-level requirements include reading three additional documents and critically reviewing them as instructed,
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Paulette Kurzer | 3 |
This course offers an introduction to the political systems of post-World War II Europe. Using a country-by-country approach, the course focuses specifically on Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and East-Central Europe. It also contains a unit on the institutions and policies of European Union. We will take a closer look at the impact of immigration on European society, the interaction between domestic and European institutions, the debates on economic reforms and market liberalization in different countries, and the relationship between the EU and the US. Graduate-level requirements include extra readings, weekly meeting to discuss extra readings, and a 20-page research paper on an instructor approved topic.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Pat Willerton | 3 |
Russian foreign policy and the political processes by which that policy is developed and implemented. Passing attention is given to the Soviet past which structures post-1991 Russian behavior. Our approach is social scientific as we attempt to identify tendencies in Russian foreign policy behavior and to explain goals and strategies. Attention is given to policies, the decision-making process, and the political elite who craft policy. Elements of continuity and change in Russian foreign and security policy (Soviet and post-Soviet) are highlighted.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Andrew Grogan | 3 |
Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) is a specialized field of practice within the broader domain of intelligence. The discipline encompasses all activities involved in the collection, use and dissemination of geographically referenced information (imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial information) using technical capabilities that include remote sensing, GIS, data management, and data visualization. GEOINT processes and capabilities are designed to gain intelligence about the national security or an operational environment, visually depict this knowledge, combine the knowledge with other information sources, and present knowledge in a way that is appropriate to the decision-making environment. GEOINT supports key mission areas related to the national security of the U.S. including informing policymakers; supporting military, intelligence, and homeland security operations, and facilitating intelligence collaboration. While the GEOINT discipline is secretive in operations, this course presents publicly available unclassified information to describe its use, benefits and governance.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Michael Burgoyne | 3 |
Mexico and the United States have always shared a complex relationship. Mexico is the second largest U.S. trading partner with over $661 billion in trade in 2021; that amounts to over a million dollars crossing the border every minute. Conversely, organized crime in Mexico has claimed nearly 200,000 lives since 2006 and there are more than 93,000 people reported as disappeared. Drugs produced or trafficked through Mexico feed a devastating drug abuse crisis in the United States that led to the deaths of 91,799 people in 2020. Despite a change in U.S. administrations, the challenges of economic integration, irregular migration, and transnational organized crime continue to drive U.S. policy objectives. In Mexico, populist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has struggled to implement his goals to take on corruption, reduce government excess, and solve Mexico's internal security crisis. Understanding the unique Mexican security situation and the Mexican perspective of security policy is critical for academics and policymakers navigating evolving bilateral security relations.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Saskia Popescu | 3 |
The evolution of infectious diseases into a global security threat isn't particularly novel but became official when the United Nations recognized HIV/AIDS as a security threat. As the world becomes more interconnected and humans encroach on natural habits, emerging infectious diseases, like COVID-19 and Ebola, have underscored the ability for diseases to severely impact critical infrastructure. Since the realization that infectious diseases pose unique threats to the stability of nation states, the notion of global health security was development as an approach to understanding and studying these unique vulnerabilities. Biodefense, biopreparedness, and biothreats are all increasingly used terminologies and studies that play into the security dynamics of infectious diseases. We will examine the concepts of global health security, as well as the spectrum of threats, which include natural, accidental, and intentional biological events.
| Instructor | Units |
|---|---|
| Paulette Kurzer | 1 |
Capstone project, in which students develop a portfolio that overviews their academic work in the context of their professional goals. This should be taken as the final course of the ISS M.A. degree.
Spring 2026, Session 1 | More information coming soon!