Head Preceptor for Prof. Aaron L. Friedberg, Department of Politics, Princeton University (Spring 2019)
Course description
An intensive examination of the theory and practice of grand strategy from the city-states of ancient Greece to the great powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Human Rights
Preceptor for Prof. Gary J. Bass, Department of Politics, Princeton University (Spring 2018)
Course description
A course about the politics of human rights, as broad in its scope as the term itself, spanning from the French Revolution in 1789 to the present day, and mapping the world from China to Poland to Zimbabwe. It includes works of political science, history, public policy, political theory, and investigative journalism. We grapple with five clusters of big questions. First, what are human rights, and what are the major theoretical critiques of the idea? Second, is it possible to prevent genocide, and is it morally acceptable and politically wise to launch humanitarian military missions to prevent the slaughter of civilians within another country? Third, how do dictatorships function, and how can human rights activists undermine them both from the inside and the outside? Fourth, what are the laws of war, and is it possible to punish those war criminals who violate them? Finally, fifth, how do human rights play out in the current struggle with terrorists?
Graduate Courses
International Relations
Lecturer for Prof. Holger Mölder, Department of Law, Tallinn University of Technology (Fall 2019)
Course description
Guest lectures on international relations and security studies in the capstone graduate seminar at TalTech Law Department's International Relations program.
Qualitative Methods
Preceptor for Prof. Keren Yarhi-Milo, Department of Politics, Princeton University (Fall 2018)
Course description
This seminar seeks to foster familiarity with “best practice” tools and skills for designing and conducting state-of-the-art social science research. It focuses specifically on methods customarily termed “qualitative,” specifically small-N, narrative, and textual modes of descriptive and causal inference. It complements courses on quantitative methods, formal modeling, experimentation, field research, language and area studies, policy analysis, and history. Recently political science as a discipline has begun more explicitly encouraging or obliging scholars to make the data, analysis and methods employed in qualitative case-study analysis more explicit, unbiased, rigorous, and transparent. This seminar aims to help students meet this new challenge.