Syllabus
Week 1. Introductions and Inquiries. Utilitarianism, consequentialism, and deontology.
Week 2. Is war ever just? If so, when?
Required:
· Oren, The Morality of War, pp. 1-30.
Optional:
· Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars excerpts from Chapters 4-6 (14 pages)
Week 3: Is it right to compel an individual to fight?
Required:
· Galston, “A Sketch of Some Arguments for Conscription'' (6 pages)
· Fullinwider, “Conscription- No” (6 pages)
Week 4: Are weapons of mass destruction ever ethical?
Required:
· Wasserstrom, “War, Nuclear War, and Nuclear Deterrence: Some Conceptual and Moral Issues” (20 pages)
Optional:
· Walzer, “Nuclear Deterrence” (15 pages)
Week 5: What obligations do we have to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants?
Required:
· Schwenkenbecher, “Collateral Damage and the Principle of Due Care” (9 pages)
· Abbate, “Assuming Risk: A Critical Analysis of a Soldier’s Duty to Prevent Collateral Casualties” (13 pages)
Optional:
· Gray, “Weaponized Non-Combatants: A Moral Conundrum of Future Asymmetrical Warfare” (16 pages)
Week 6: Are drone strikes morally equivalent to other forms of force?
Required:
· Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles” (26 pages)
Optional:
· Film: “Eye in the Sky” (1 hour and 42 minutes)
Assignments:
· Paper 1 Due Friday 5 pm
· In-Class Debate 1 Prompt: Unmanned aerial drone strikes may justly be used to achieve political goals. Participants to be assigned.
Week 7: What can justly be done with captives?
Required:
· Santucci, “A Question of Identity: The Use of Torture in Asymmetric War” (17 pages)
· Majima, “Just Torture?” (13 pages)
Week 8: Genocide and humanitarian intervention
Required:
· Valentino, Final Solutions ch. 3 (27 pages)
Optional:
· Dallaire, “The End of Innocence: Rwanda 1994” (11 pages)
Assignments:
· In-Class Debate 2 Prompt: The dominant military powers (e.g. the P-5, NATO) should intervene militarily in civil wars when genocide is evidently occurring. Participants to be assigned.
Week 9: Ethics of state surveillance
Required:
· Königs, “Government Surveillance, Privacy, and Legitmacy” (22 pages)
Optional:
· Intelligence2 Debate Video, “Mass Collection of U.S. Phone Records Violates the Fourth Amendment,” Abdo and Wydra v. Baker and Yoo (1 hour and 28 minutes)
Assignments:
· Paper 2 Due Friday 5 pm
Week 10: How can global inequality be resolve justly?
Required:
· Intelligence2 Debate Video, “Aid to Africa is Doing More Harm than Good,” Ayittey, Easterly, and Rieff v. Lucas, McArthur, and Smith (1 hour and 45 minutes)
Optional:
· Collier, The Bottom Billion
Assignments:
· In-Class Debate 3 Prompt: The highly developed countries (HDCs) should substantially increase their foreign aid to less developed countries (LDCs) in order to decrease global economic inequality. Participants to be assigned.
Week 11: What is owed to conflict refugees?
Required:
· Kukathis, “Are Refugees Special?” (21 pages)
Optional:
· Betts and Collier, “Help Refugees Help Themselves” (9 pages)
Week 12: What obligations do states have to protect the environment?
Required:
· Gardiner, “A Perfect Moral Storm” (13 pages)
· Adow, “The Climate Debt: What the West Owes the Rest” (8 pages)
NOTE: All texts available in this syllabus are for study purposes of this course only. They are protected by copyright and must not be further distributed.
Annotation
An exploration of academic arguments about ethics and international affairs. Themes include war initiation, military conscription, weapons of mass destruction, target discrimination, unmanned military vehicles, treatment of prisoners, humanitarian intervention, genocide, surveillance, economic inequality, migration and refugees, and climate change.