21st Century Global Affairs

Open to students in grades 9-12, 21st Century Global Affairs is a dynamic one-semester course designed to have students explore major global issues and challenges facing the United States and the world. Presented from an “issue-oriented” perspective, students will analyze and offer solutions to critical foreign policy crises as well as other contemporary global concerns; these concerns will include regional global conflicts (i.e., unrest in the Middle East), environmental challenges (i.e., global climate change), and ongoing threats to global stability (i.e., cyber attacks, the rise of illiberal regimes, and rogue nation-states such as North Korea).  The course will equip students with the skills to decipher the ever-increasing threats to the United States and the global community through an understanding of an issue's unique history and its likely trajectory into the future. These skills will be developed through the application of foreign policy theory and statecraft to the issues that are explored. Because the most critical global issues change over time, issues explored will change from semester-to-semester in order to best reflect and capture understandings of the major challenges of the times.

Students with aspiring global aspirations/interests should consider taking Intercultural Studies I and II from the World Language Department in addition to this course.