4.0

Average Course Rating

This course will expose students to the theory and practice of leadership, ethics, and decisionmaking in the realm of statecraft. We will take an immersive and practice-focused approach, wrestling with past and present policy challenges as a means to understand and internalize the struggle of policymakers trying to make and implement good decisions. Given that students will not vault immediately to the upper echelons of leadership upon graduation, we will take up the challenges that confront more junior and mid-level policymakers as well as senior officials. Our case studies will encompass historical successes and failures as well as simulations and exercises in which students will be forced to stand in the uncomfortable shoes of decisonmakers facing no-win dilemmas. By the course’s end, students will have sharpened their skills of analysis, judgment, collaboration, decisionmaking, and presentation. They will have formed preliminary views on the following fundamental questions and be positioned to take these lessons forward into their careers.