Spring Term Public Policy Courses

PBPL 26: Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Professor H. Gilbert Welch MD, MPH (10)

Health care in the United States costs more than in other countries, but is it better? Answering this question requires understanding a wide range of subjects, including the pathophysiology of disease, clinical decision making, epidemiology, and public policy. This course provides an introduction to these tools. We will also consider additional questions: Is more screening & early diagnosis the best way to stay healthy?  Does more treatment always help people feel better?  And how has the "Dartmouth School" of health policy contributed to the debate?           Dist: SOC; WCult: W.

PBPL 41/WRIT 41: Writing and Speaking Public Policy, Professor Julie Kalish (2A)

Writing and Speaking Public Policy is a hands-on experience, designed for students planning for a career in leadership, government, and public policy. The course uses politics, law, popular culture, psychology, history, and theater, as well as public policy, to draw out fundamental persuasive principles and techniques.  It will provide models of successful policy campaigns … as well as those that suffered from some fatal flaws. We will start to explore barriers to effective communication and work with some tools for surmounting them. Dist: ART; WCult: W

PBPL 42/GOVT 60.04: Ethics and Public Policy, Professor Julie Rose (10A)

This course examines the nature and validity of arguments about vexing moral issues in public policy.  Students examine a number of basic moral controversies in public life, focusing on different frameworks for thinking about justice and he ends of politics.  The primary aim of the course is to provide each student with an opportunity to develop his/her ability to think in sophisticated ways about morally difficult policy issues.  Amount the questions students address will be the following:  Are policies that permit torture justifiable under any circumstances?  Do people have basic moral claims to unequal economic holdings and rewards, or should economic distribution be patterned for the sake of social justice?  Should people be permitted to move freely between countries?   Is abortion wrong, in theory or in practice, and in what ways should it be restricted? Dist: TMV; WCult:  W

PBPL 91: Independent Study in Public Policy, Professor Ronald Shaiko (Arrange)

This course offers an opportunity for a student enrolled in the Public Policy Minor to do advanced, independent work under the direction of a faculty member in the area of public policy. The topic under study may relate to prior coursework in the Public Policy Minor, an off-campus internship, or a co-curricular activity sponsored by the Rockefeller Center. All students enrolled in Public Policy 91 in a given term should expect to meet regularly together for classroom instruction and discussion with Rockefeller Center faculty and staff. To enroll, a student must prepare a brief proposal that describes the topic to be studied, its relationship to the student's prior public policy courses or activities, and the student's goals for undertaking the research. Prerequisites: Public Policy 5 and the Research Methods course prerequisite to the Public Policy Minor.