Spring 2021 | PA 5890 Section 001: Topics in Foreign Policy and International Affairs -- Fact-finding Investigations on Human Rights (65502)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 15 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option No Audit
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Mon, Wed 01:00PM - 02:15PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (11 of 15 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Selected topics.
- Class Notes:
- Class will be offered REMOTELY. Class will meet synchronously-online during Spring 2021 during the scheduled time. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?WALSH912+PA5890+Spring2021
- Class Description:
This is a 3-credit course that meets for the full semester.
This course will familiarize you with core principles and techniques for human rights fact-finding, focusing especially on interview skills. You will learn what fact-finding is and how it is used to advance human rights. You'll also learn how to plan and prepare for fact-finding; coordinate with partners and others; navigate security challenges; conduct interviews with survivors, witnesses, officials, and others; conduct remote interviews; minimize the risk of retraumatization and vicarious trauma; and adapt fact-finding interview approaches for challenging contexts (e.g., emergency or conflict settings, detention facilities, or refugee camps). Readings, discussions and exercises will address specific considerations when interviewing LGBTQI survivors, children, people with disabilities, older people, and other groups.
You will practice interview techniques through many in-class role play simulations. Students in this course should be comfortable with role-plays as a learning method.
While there are many possible approaches to fact-finding, this course will focus heavily on one-on-one interviews. We will touch briefly on other forms of fact-finding, including through the use of various technologies.
The course will draw heavily on my experience conducting fact-finding interviews and training staff at Human Rights Watch. Bear in mind that this is just one of many approaches to investigating the realization or denial of human rights.
This elective course should be considered a supplement to other courses on research methods, not a replacement. I strongly encourage students to take courses on qualitative research methods and social science perspectives on human rights. The approach taught in this course is more like investigative journalism paired with advocacy than like social science research.
- Who Should Take This Class?:
Graduate Students
This course qualifies as an elective for the Master of Human Rights and the Human Rights Graduate Minor at the U.
- Learning Objectives:
Through this course, you will understand what fact-finding is, and how it is used in the human rights field. More specifically, you will have developed skills and knowledge that will enable you to:
Adhere to core standards and ethical considerations for human rights interviews
Interview survivors of human rights abuses, and understand best practices for interviewing specific populations
Interview government officials
Navigate remote interviews
Assess and handle security risks for interviews
Obtain data and information from official sources
Understand and mitigate risks of retraumatization and vicarious trauma
- Grading:
- Grades are based on class participation and on written and verbal assignments and exercises. Grade basis can be A-F or S/N.
- Exam Format:
No exams. Assignments will be practical, aimed at developing skills for planning and executing fact-finding.
- Class Format:
Seminar style. Remote instruction with synchronous and some asynchronous sessions.
- Workload:
Comparable to other graduate courses.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65502/1213
- Syllabus:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/walsh912_PA5890_Spring2021.pdf
- Past Syllabi:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/walsh912_PA5890_Spring2023.pdf (Spring 2023)
http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/walsh912_PA5890_Spring2022.pdf (Spring 2022)
http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/walsh912_PA5890_Fall2020.pdf (Fall 2020) - Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 13 November 2020
Spring 2021 | PA 5890 Section 002: Topics in Foreign Policy and International Affairs -- Politics & Law of Conflict Mgmt & Intervention (66484)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 15 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Tue, Thu 08:15AM - 09:30AMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (13 of 30 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Selected topics.
- Class Notes:
- Class will be REMOTE. Lectures will be delivered synchronously and asynchronously throughout the semester. Both lectures in Week 1 (January 19 and January 21, 2021) will be SYNCHRONOUS. A schedule that shows whether sessions are synchronous or asynchronous will be provided to students. Full title: "Politics & Law of Conflict Mgmt & Intervention." Some knowledge of international relations will be useful as a basis for this course. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?mukho017+PA5890+Spring2021
- Class Description:
- This course will invite students to consider the ways in which politics and law inform, undermine, and bypass one another in the realm of conflict management and military intervention. We will draw from a rich set of cases across time and space to examine the notion of "threats to peace and security" as it has evolved. We will, then, turn to the basket of instruments that make up contemporary intervention and conflict-management, starting with prevention and the right to exercise self-defense. We will, then, move into the space of military interventions that have been framed (both strictly and loosely) as means of keeping or restoring the peace. From here, we will enter the arena of more aggressive interventions, those that aim at the breaking, making, or remaking of states. Finally, we will consider the newest frontiers of intervention, those that have been charted in the last decade. Shadowy threats and elusive enemies have led to a variety of new, often controversial campaigns. New kinds of technology that could only have been imagined a few decades ago have made possible unprecedented forms of stealth and interference. And, yet, some of the world's most powerful states find themselves struggling on and off the battlefield. This is the conundrum we will consider in this final section of the course. Even as we consider the politics and geopolitics at hand, we will situate our empirical analysis of each case and/or phenomenon within the larger context of key legal doctrines, debates, and dilemmas. Unlike other survey courses on conflict management, we will not approach the material as a chronological catalog of interventions. Instead, we will engage the material thematically, juxtaposing more contemporary cases with historical ones in order to understand the various evolutions in political, legal, and operational thought.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/66484/1213
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 23 November 2020
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2021 Public Affairs Classes
- To link directly to this ClassInfo page from your website or to save it as a bookmark, use:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PA&catalog_nbr=5890&term=1213
- To see a URL-only list for use in the Faculty Center URL fields, use:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PA&catalog_nbr=5890&term=1213&url=1
- To see this page output as XML, use:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PA&catalog_nbr=5890&term=1213&xml=1
- To see this page output as JSON, use:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PA&catalog_nbr=5890&term=1213&json=1
- To see this page output as CSV, use:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PA&catalog_nbr=5890&term=1213&csv=1
ClassInfo created and maintained by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
If you have questions about specific courses, we strongly encourage you to contact the department where the course resides.