Syllabus
PPS 145: LEADERSHIP, POLICY AND CHANGE
Spring 2005
Instructor: Steve Schewel
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays: Room 202-A, by appointment.
I will be
available on many days one hour before class. Please feel free to
drop in.
Phone: 286-0116
E-mail: sschewel@aol.com
Overview
This semester, our course will deal with two critical
and closely related aspects of leading change for a more just society:
(1) the role of courageous individual moral choice and (2) the role
of individuals in social movements.
Each of you will undoubtedly be called upon to lead at various times
in your life. One goal of this course is to help you grapple with
the role of conscience and moral choice in leadership—and
to help you get in touch with and define your own beliefs and where
they should take you as a leader. The second and equally important
goal is to help you understand the role of social movements in winning
the rights and opportunities we take for granted today--and to help
you think about your own participation in leading such movements
for justice.
This year the war in Iraq and the “War on Terror” present
us with vivid and often extreme illustrations of the kind of individual
moral judgments under pressure that human beings are called upon
to make every day. So we’ll begin our study in the present—with
the American military guards at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib
prison, and we’ll see where that trail leads us. We’ll
move on to study the moral choices of famous and infamous historical
figures, of ordinary people in history, of characters in literature
and film. We’ll study compliance and resistance in Hitler’s
Third Reich and Stalin’s Gulag, the American internment of
Japanese citizens in World War II, the My Lai massacre during the
Vietnam War and the officers who kept it hidden. We’ll examine
the conscience of Israeli officers who are currently refusing to
fight across the “Green Line.” We’ll study courageous
government whistle-blowers and wartime conscientious objectors.
We’ll read and think together about two social movements:
American 19th century populism and current public health efforts
to beat back disease in underdeveloped societies—as seen through
the story of a Duke graduate on a quest to “cure the world.”
We’ll study each of these historical moments through various
texts. The workload is reasonably heavy: You will be expected to
read a book every week, view several films outside of class during
the course of the semester, and write a brief paper or journal entries
(see below) almost every week as well. You will also be expected
to participate actively in class discussion, and you may be called
upon to help lead class discussion during the semester.
You will write a term paper for the end of the semester of 12-20
pages. This paper will be on a topic of your own choosing with my
advice and consent. The paper will be closely related to the themes
of the course as they emerge.
This is not a history course, nor is it a literature course, although
we will be studying fascinating history as well as literary and
cinematic texts, and in class I will be giving you historical and
literary context for the works we will be studying. I welcome into
our discussion your own expertise, knowledge and experience.
What is the highest goal of this class? Informed by scholarship
and the ideas of your classmates, you will examine your own beliefs
and the challenges to your own conscience; you will think deeply
about how your beliefs will shape your future leadership, about
what social movements are important in our society now, and about
how you will participate as an engaged citizen in building a more
just society. I look forward to doing this work with you.
I expect this class to be both rigorous and lots of fun for all
of us. I expect the class to stimulate and challenge each of us
intellectually, emotionally and morally. If we do our work well
together, it will be a blast.
Required Books
The reading for this course will be both from required texts and
e-reserves or assigned articles available on the Internet. The following
is a list of texts which you should purchase. They are available
at the Regulator Bookshop, 720 Ninth St.
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn
The Reader by Bernard Schlink
Four Hours at My Lai by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim
Regeneration by Pat Barker
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Required Film Viewing
During the course of the semester, you will be required to see
several (probably 3 or 4) films. I am not assigning particular films
for particular dates now. Rather, I will be assigning films and
dates as the semester develops. My idea is that during the course
of the semester, films will show up in the theaters that will illuminate
the themes of the course—and will especially help us think
together about how our popular culture portrays social conscience,
social movements, organizing, engaged citizenship and democratic
leadership.
I’ll need your help on this, since you will have ideas about
which films we ought to see on the big screen. Please give me any
ideas that you have about upcoming movies we ought to see.
I may also assign films which you will have to see on your DVD
or at Lilly Library, where I will place some films on reserve for
our class. I will assign more or fewer (or none) of these films
as the semester progresses, depending on how many current films
we decide to see in theaters. The advantage of the older films I
have selected is that I know they are terrific films and that they
speak directly to what we will be studying.
Thanks for remaining flexible on this. I think if we do it right,
that it could be a lot of fun—and that we could learn a lot
from current films about our culture’s ideas on the theme
of our course.
Special Events and Details
Speakers in class: To be announced
No class on Tuesday, April 19: I will be out
of town for a work-related conference. Class will be made up at
dinner at my house (see immediately below.)
Dinner and class at my house: You are invited
to dinner and class at my house on Monday, April 4. I will provide
the food and drink.
Grading
Grades in this course will be based on the following:
Class participation: 40%
Text-response papers or journal: 40%
Final paper: 20%
The text-response papers and journals are described in detail below.
I will respond individually to most of your writing, but you will
not see a grade on individual papers or journal entries. Rather,
you will be graded on your text-response papers or journal entries
as a group. I’ll be evaluating the quality and deepening of
your work throughout the semester.
At mid-semester, I will give each of you a piece of paper with
your grade or talk to you individually about your grade to that
point in the course.
I consider myself neither an especially difficult nor an especially
easy grader. I endeavor to roughly follow the Institute of Public
Policy’s guidelines for grade point distribution in seminar
classes. In the past, I have given plenty of B+ and A- grades, with
some B-, B and A grades and the occasional lower grade as well.
This class is a seminar with rigorous requirements for reading,
writing, thinking and class discussion, and I am accustomed to getting
excellent work from my students. I don’t mind grading accordingly.
If I get excellent work, I reward it. If not, I don’t.
Course Requirements
* Attend all classes. Be on time.
* Complete all the reading assignments each week before Tuesday’s
class (unless otherwise indicated in the syllabus and class calendar
below). Be prepared to talk about the reading (and/or the film,
if one is assigned).
* Turn in your reading-response paper (about two pages)
or your updated reflective journal on the following dates:
Jan. 18, 25; Feb. 1, 8, 15; March 1, 8; April 5, 12.
(Nota bene: I may change some of these assignment dates
and/or the form of the assignment.)
* Participate actively in our discussions in class. This doesn’t
mean you need to talk more than anyone else. It does mean
that every student needs to contribute to deepening our conversation
about moral leadership, conscience and social movements throughout
the semester. Expect to say something valuable every class.
This is a safe place to express yourself honestly. Push yourself
a little. If you’re shy about speaking in class, I’ll
help you.
* Write a final paper of roughly 12-20 pages. I must approve your
paper topic, and I will work with you on choosing a topic that you
will enjoy and learn from. These papers should illuminate some of
the issues we have studied in class concerning moral leadership,
social conscience and social change. You should write about something
that especially appeals to you. The essays should certainly call
on what you have learned in class, but they should go beyond this
class with significant additional research of your own. I am looking
for a terrific, substantial piece of work here, something that uses
outside sources to build on the work of the class and includes your
own strong synthesis of the research. This paper will be due at
some point during the examination period.
I also welcome your ideas about creative alternatives to the final
paper. In the past, my students have occasionally proposed different
kinds of alternative final projects. These projects must be comparable
in work-time and intellectual rigor to the research paper they replace.
My past students have produced oil paintings, songs, a series of
op-ed pieces for publication in major national dailies, a cycle
of brochures on race issues at Duke, and other worthwhile projects.
Such project proposals must receive my permission before you can
embark on them as a replacement for the final paper.
Guidance for Text-Response Papers
What are your thoughts and ideas about this week’s text--the
film or reading (or both)? That’s what I want from the reading-
and film-response papers which should be about two pages in length.
(Please do not write longer than two pages!) As the semester progresses,
you’ll be able to relate earlier readings, films and class
discussions to the texts for the current week in the papers that
you write. I am interested in your reflective response to the various
people and issues we study in relation to your own life and to the
events of our time.
I’m also interested in your response to the way in which
the authors and filmmakers--in both works of fiction and non-fiction--represent
the leaders they portray. What points of view do you detect in their
portraits of these leaders, and how does that matter? Do you agree
or disagree? What points do you find most compelling, most interesting,
most challenging? Don’t feel the need to discuss every aspect
of the week’s reading or film; rather, I recommend that you
pick one salient aspect of the text and focus exclusively on that.
Some weeks we will be reading several short pieces by different
authors, or we might be reading a piece of fiction, say, and seeing
a film the same week. If so, please feel free to compare and contrast
them, to write about their interplay and the ideas that interplay
sparked in your own mind.
I do want you to use your creativity in these papers, but I also
want each of them to be closely related to the text you are discussing,
to demonstrate that you are coming to grips with the text in some
important way. I am looking for original, challenging thought and
excellent writing on a coherent thesis closely related to the texts.
I may, at times, share portions of your paper with the class by
reading them aloud.
Once during the semester I may ask you to post your paper on-line
for reading by the entire class. I will assign this in advance.
Guidance for Reflective Journals
As with the traditional two-page text-response papers, in your
journal you will need to respond to the books and films we will
study. However, the reflective journal will give you the chance
to use a more creative and personal format in responding to the
books, films and class discussions.
The best student journals relate work in this course to ideas and
information the student brings from ther courses, from discussions
with others and from work experience. The best journals are also
personal in a way that is more difficult to accomplish in the traditional
two-page essay. The informal journal style should allow you to dig
a little deeper into your own ideas and emotions, to bring more
of yourself to the work of this course.
I will expect strong writing in the journal—not the same
kind of formally strong writing I expect in the two-page papers,
but writing that is cogent and thoughtful. You don’t need
to worry about the paragraphs and grammar so much in this format,
but you need to think and write well.
The journals will need to be typed or written very legibly in
a good notebook with wide margins on each page. You can write
as much as you like in the journals. You need to write at least
three times a week in the journal to make it successful, and I hope
you will write more often than that—about the texts we study,
about your responses to our class discussion, about ideas from other
courses or from your discussions with friends that relate to what
we’re studying in this course. Jot down a sentence or two,
some great idea you’ve just had, or write an essay or a long
personal reflection or a poem.
I will take up the journals on the same days that the two-page
papers are turned in, and I will respond to them in the margins
of your pages. Although I may read aloud from the journals in class,
I will absolutely respect any confidential matter which you may
write about in your journal.
If you are writing your journal by hand in a notebook, please
hand in photocopies of the pages (extremely legible photocopies!)
so that you can hang on to your journal and keep writing in it while
I am reading the pages you hand in.
As with the two-page text-response papers, I may ask you once
during the semester to post your journal entries for the week on-line
for reading by other members of the class. I will assign this well
in advance.
Course Syllabus and Schedule
Week 1: Jan. 13
Introduction to each other and the themes, goals and work of the
course.
Week 2: Jan. 18, 20
For Tuesday: The reading for this week is all either on the
Internet or e-reserves. When you are reading the e-reserves, please
print out the pages and read them in hard copy. Please read:
(1) On e-reserves, three chapters of Chain of Command by
Seymour M. Hersh. These are Chapter 1, “Torture at Abu Ghraib;”
Chapter 4, “The Iraq Hawks;” and Chapter 5, “Who
Lied to Whom?”
(2) On e-reserves, selections from the book, The Abu Ghraib
Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and
the Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, edited
by Steven Strasser.
(3) Internet articles: I will email you the links to 15 articles
from various Internet sources including the Baltimore Sun, the
Washington Post, The Nation magazine, the Weekly Standard
newspaper and others. You may not need to print these out to
read them, but please read them in their entirety for Tuesday’s
class. (For some sites, such as the Post, you may need to sign on
as a member. There will be no cost for this.)
For Thursday: From Houston Chronicle, August 22,
2002, “Profile: Michael Kopper.”
Week 3: Jan. 25, 27
For Tuesday: Essays from Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen,
edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart, 1998. These readings are on e-reserve.
Please print them out and read them in hard copy:
* “Introduction” by Jeffrey C. Stewart, pp. 12-16
* “Doing the State Some Service,” by Derrick Bell,
pp. 49-58
* “Paul Robeson and the American Labor Movement,”
by Mark D. Naison, pp. 179-194
* “Comrades and Friends,” by Gerald Horne, pp. 197-215
* “Paul Robeson and the USSR,” by David Levering Lewis,
pp. 217-233
* “What is Robeson’s Contemporary Legacy?” Julianne
Malveaux, pp. 252-72
Optional film viewing: You might want to view films about Paul
Robeson or films in which he acts. Many of them are available at
Lilly Library including Sanders of the River, Song of Freedom,
and The Emporer Jones to which is appended a very good
half-hour documentary called Tribute to Paul Robeson.
For Thursday: On e-reserves. Please print out and read in
hard copy. “Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” by Fred
G. Leebron, pp. 100-113 from Ethics and Politics, edited
by Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson, 1997.
Also, from the same book, and also on e-reserves, “The Odd
Couple,” by Taylor Branch, pp. 152-161.
Week 4: Feb. 1, 3
Four Hours at My Lai by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim.
Week 5: Feb. 8, 10
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning
Week 6: Feb. 15, 17
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
Week 7: Feb. 22, 24
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Week 8: March 1,3
For Tuesday: When the Emperor was Divine by Julie
Otsuka.
Also, please peruse websites about the Japanese American internment
of WWII. I will email you the web links, including PBS, USIA and
National Park Service sites.
For Thursday: Excerpts from War Without Mercy: Race
and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower. This is on e-reserves.
Please print out and read in hard copy.
Week 9: March 8, 10
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Spring Break!
Week 10: March 22, 24
For Tuesday: Read the Israeli “Refusenik” autobiographies
(to be handed out in class).
Also, from e-reserves, please print out and read two essays from
the book Contending with Hitler, edited by David Clay Large.
The essays are “Choice and Courage” by Claudia Koonz,
and “The Second World War, German Society, and the Internal
Resistance to Hitler,” by Peter Hoffman.
For Thursday: From e-reserves, please print out
and read “Moral Opportunism: A Case Study,” by Kenneth
L. Winston, pp. 154-184 from Integrity and Conscience, edited by
Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams.
Week 11: March 29, 31
Current readings in newspapers, magazines and on Internet TBA concerning
Abu Ghraib trials and Guantanamo internments.
Week 12: April 5, 7
The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn
Week 13: April 12, 14
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Week 14: April 21
(No class April 19)
The Reader by Bernard Schlink
Week 15: April 26
Wrap-up and final themes of the course
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