Fall 2018

An inside look at how political campaigns operate from the people who run them. Class material will be directed toward students who are interested in direct involvement in campaign politics or who are looking for a greater understanding of the political process. Students will be required to develop a complete written campaign strategy document in order to fulfill class requirements. Students will be expected to follow political and campaign news through the news media and be prepared to discuss those developments in class. Serious lectures, discussion and classroom exercises on campaign strategy and message development and delivery, with a special focus the role of political media. This section will focus predominantly on campaign advertising, news media coverage, the emerging role of the Internet, and other means by which candidates communicate their message to the voters.

Subfield: American Politics

Please note that the description is from Fall 2013.

This course is designed to introduce students to the major theoretical approaches to international politics, to explore important historical and contemporary questions and debates in international affairs, and to teach students to think critically about international relations.

Political Science 5 is a prerequisite for Political Science 124A "War!" and most upper-division Political Science courses within the international relations subfield.

Please note that this course description is from Fall 2013.

This course is a workshop for discussing work-in-progress in moral, political, and legal theory by invited scholars. The central aim is to enable students to engage directly with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to create a space that brings together people from different disciplines and perspectives--including economists, sociologists, and political scientists as well as journalists--who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues philosophers and theorists should know something about. This semester our theme is “free speech in the era of social media.”

The format of the course is as follows. For the sessions with guest presenters, lunch will be served starting at 12:00 noon; we’ll begin at 12:15 p.m. A designated commentator will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the paper. The presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond and then we will open up the discussion to the group. The first part of the course will be open to non-enrolled students, faculty, and visitors who wish to participate in the workshop discussion. We’ll stop for a break at 2:00 p.m. and those not enrolled in the course will leave. Enrolled students will continue the discussion with the guest from 2:10 to 3:00 p.m.

Schedule of Presentations:

August 24: Introduction

August 31: Seana Shiffrin, UCLA

September 7: Jennifer Rothman, Loyola University

September 14: Henry Brady, UC Berkeley

September 21: Heather Whitney, NYU

September 28: Ilya Somin, George Mason University

October 5: Robert Post, Yale University

October 12: Sigal Ben-Porath, University of Pennsylvania

October 19: Leslie Kendrick, University of Virginia

October 26: T. M. Scanlon, Harvard University

November 2: Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley

November 9: Tim Wu, Columbia University

November 16: Susan Brison, Dartmouth College

November 30: Conclusion

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/courses/academic_calendars.php

Please see click on the link below for more information regrarding RWAP

http://polisci.berkeley.edu/research-and-teaching/lectures-colloquia/research-workshop-american-politics-rwap-colloquium

This colloquium exposes graduate students and faculty to work by leading scholars of comparative politics working in diverse substantive areas. Graduate students are expected to read circulated papers of visiting speakers ahead of the colloquium and participate actively in raising questions and making comments.  They are encouraged to meet visiting speakers in their areas of interest in group or one-on-one sessions. 

NOTE: This description is from Spring 2015

Please see click on the link below for more information regrarding MIRTH

http://polisci.berkeley.edu/research-and-teaching/lectures-colloquia/monday-international-relations-thoughts-series-mirth

PS 375 is a two-credit course designed for first-time Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs).  The course seeks to introduce students to practical teaching methods and to foster discussion about effective pedagogy. It also focuses on professional development, in particular on developing skills that are closely related to effective teaching such as presentation skills. The course features student presentations on selected pedagogical topics, panels on key issues related to teaching and to professional development, and discussion of weekly assignments in relation to challenges encountered by GSIs in the course of their teaching.

Approaches to causal inference using the potential outcomes framework. Covers observational studies with and without ignorable treatment assignment, randomized experiments with and without noncompliance, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, sensitivity analysis and randomization inference. Applications are drawn from a variety of fields including political science economics, sociology, public health and medicine.

Instructor: Peng Ding

The goal of this yearlong course is to provide a forum in which students propose, develop, and complete a research project that produces a journal-length paper of publishable quality. This paper will typically serve as students' second-year M.A. essay, and the course is intended as a complement to that requirement. This course is primarily oriented towards second-year Ph.D. students in any subfield (students in other years may participate with the professors’ consent). The course meets regularly during parts of the fall semester and irregularly during the spring semester. In the first few weeks of the course, we discuss the process of moving from research topic to research question; and we survey published articles by recent Ph.D. students/assistant professors, focusing on the structure and nature of the writing and presentation as well the quality of the argument and evidence. We then move to students’ research proposals for the rest of the fall semester. During the spring semester, students meet individually with the course instructors and their advisors, develop and revise drafts of their papers, and present their work at a department “APSA-style” conference. In order to complete the course and receive credit, students must complete the requirements for both semesters.