In the spring semester, new groups are formed to undertake analytic projects for real-world clients in government and nonprofit agencies. These teams, working under the supervision of faculty members, write a report analyzing an actual environmental policy or management problem faced by their clients. Again, projects selected will be relevant to the cohort's two earth systems problem themes.
In the spring semester, new groups are formed to undertake analytic projects for real-world clients in government and nonprofit agencies. These teams, working under the supervision of faculty members, write a report analyzing an actual environmental policy or management problem faced by their clients. Again, projects selected will be relevant to the cohort's two earth systems problem themes.
When externalities go uncorrected, and public goods go undersupplied, the reason is not that "the market" fails; the reason is that governments are unable or unwilling to intervene effectively. The biggest problem is with transnational externalities and regional and global public goods. This is partly because of the scale of these problems, but it is also because the institutional arrangements at this level make effective intervention difficult. There is no World Government. Instead, there are around 200 sovereign states. To support sustainable development globally, states must cooperate, and yet states' self-interests often conflict with their collective interests. This is why all countries agree that collective action must be taken to limit climate change, and yet, though they try and try again, countries seem unable to muster the individual action needed to meet their own collective goal. The aim of this course is to develop an apparatus for understanding international collective action for sustainable development. By an "apparatus," I mean a theory, a structured way of looking at and understanding the world. Rather than just present the theory, my aim is to show you why theory is needed, how it has been constructed, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. Basically, in addition to teaching you principles and tools, I want you to come to see how this field has developed, what it has achieved, and where it has fallen short. Throughout the course, we shall also be looking at tests and applications of the theory-empirical and experimental papers in addition to case studies. The course draws from a number of disciplines, especially economics, game theory (analytical and experimental), and international relations-but also international law, philosophy, history, the natural and physical sciences, and engineering. The focus will be on institutions, and the way that they restructure the relations among states to cause states to behave differently-that is, to cause them to undertake collective action. In terms of applications, the course will address not only climate change but also depletion of the ozone layer, trans-boundary air pollution, pollution of the oceans, over-fishing, biodiversity loss, and the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.
Politics, History, and the Arts" is an interdisciplinary course that examines some of the major controversies and "non-controversies" in the study of the Soviet Union and its successor states-including East Central Europe-and thereby traces the evolution of post/Soviet studies in general and Ukrainian studies in particular in light of actual political, historical and artistic developments within the region. In particular, the course explores how scholarly disciplines, academic discourses, political controversies, and normative predispositions affect academic debates as well as how scholarship and the objects of scholarly study interact to affect conceptual, methodological, theoretical, and empirical understandings. The course focuses on the following questions: 1) The Russian Revolution: Did it come or was it made? 2) Was Stalinism inevitable? 3) Why was the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 invisible for over four decades? 4) Socialist realism: art or propaganda? 5) Are collaboration and resistance the only responses to despotism? 6) World War II or the Great Patriotic War? 7) Why was the totalitarianism-revisionism confrontation so contentious? 8) Why were the non-Russians marginalized by Soviet studies? 9) Did Sovietologists fail to predict the USSR's collapse? 10) Why are Gorbachev and Yeltsin reviled and why is Putin adored? 11) Could the Soviet system be reformed? 12) What should post-Soviet societies remember? 13) What should post-Soviet museums display and whom should monuments commemorate?
Research work culminating in a creditable dissertation on a problem of a fundamental nature selected in conference between student and adviser. Wide latitude is permitted in choice of a subject, but independent work of distinctly graduate character is required in its handling.
This course will examine alternative methodologies for projecting future conditions of human society and the physical Earth on a time scale of 1-2 generations ahead. The goal is to develop forecasting and planning tools to support sustainable development. The specific focus will be the state of the world's major regions in the year 2050. The course will emphasize complex systems dynamics across several interacting dimensions: demographic, environmental, economic, social, technological, and political. The methodologies will distinguish between systems forecasting, planning, and control.
All graduate students are required to attend the departmental colloquium as long as they are in residence. Advanced doctoral students may be excused after 3 years of residence. No degree credit is granted
This is a Public Health Course. Public Health classes are offered on the Health Services Campus at 168th Street.For more detailed course information, please go to Mailman School of Public Health Courses website at http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/academics/courses
Prerequisite: the qualifying examination for the doctorate. Required of doctoral candidates.