This first section was written Sunday 15 December 2024. I would ask you to bear in mind that I include paragraphs from university websites for the sake of clarity.
We went last night to a 21st birthday party given by cousin Rebecca for her son, currently enrolled at the University of Glasgow. Also attending were some university friends and his flatmates. One of the young men was studying International Relations. I asked him whether he thought of a PPE degree instead, but he indicated that the PPE programme was in fact oversubscribed and therefore more difficult to get into. Rather than wait he opted for International Relations. In effect not a too distant course of study.
The Programme Structure at Glasgow states:
Like all disciplines in the social sciences, International Relations is a subject that is open to interpretation and debate. Our methods of teaching are based largely on classroom dialogue and debate. You will attend lectures that identify important themes in international relations and then explore these themes in depth during seminars.
You will think about ethical questions such as the role and limits of state power, conflict and political violence, and the obligations that one state has to another. You will also consider empirical questions such as: What are the causes of war? Under what conditions do states cooperate to address common problems such as climate change, human rights violations and development? And how influential are non-state actors?
YEAR 1-
Introduction to politics introduces the fundamentals of politics from core concepts and theories to the key components of political institutions and their relationship to individuals.
Introduction to international relations introduces you to key approaches to explaining and understanding key aspects of international order.
YEAR 2 -
History of political thought examines political thought from the ancients, primarily Aristotle, through Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke to Rousseau and Karl Marx.
Introduction to comparative politics explores and compares different countries to introduces you to the variety of political regimes that exist in the contemporary international system.
YEARS 3 AND 4-
If you progress to Honours (years 3 and 4), in year 3 you will take a core course on international relations concepts which will include analysing, criticising, and applying concepts and theories of international relations to real-world cases in order to better understand the complexities of historical and contemporary global politics. Topics may include the Coronavirus pandemic, Britain’s changing world role, immigration, the role of gender in global politics and ideas of national belonging.
During both of your Honour’s years (3 and 4) you can select from around 45 courses, including Politics of the EU, Politics of migration, Politics of terror, Postcolonial international relations theory, Global environmental politics, War and international security and Visual global politics.
SPECIAL GLASGOW FEATURE
Glasgow Q-Step Degrees
Studying International Relations at Glasgow can be taken in partnership with the Glasgow Q-Step programme to give you more opportunities to develop your quantitative research skills
The University of Glasgow's Q-Step Centre offers programmes which develop your quantitative skills, or in other words, your ability to handle data and use numerical evidence.
Developing quantitative skills and your confidence in using them, will really enhance your insight and understanding of the key issues you encounter in your chosen field of study.
The University of Glasgow Q-Step Centre offers five degree programmes that integrate quantitative skills training within the School of Social and Political Sciences. All of these programmes aim to engage you with meaningful ways of understanding the social world.
We will teach you how to understand and analyse quantitative results, as well as how to present your own, and how to discuss their substantive implications. These are essential skills for understanding quantitative evidence presented in academic literature, but also for interrogating data in public media and government reports.
Around one quarter of your study time will be devoted to quantitative methods. And our degrees also offer you the possibility to gain valuable experience by participating in internships with selected high-profile employers.
I have highlighted in red a couple of sentences that indicate the desired outcome for students from this course of study. Ethics and the limits of state power, conflict and political violence. There appears to be quite a lot of that going around at the moment.
The young man I was speaking to was in his second year. He seemed very clear and committed to his course of study. Before starting University he had taken a gap year, not to go travelling, nor indeed volunteering at some worthy cause locally or abroad, but had taken a job in an office earning some £30,000 a year. Not too terrible for a young man of 20. His experience however was very clear. He worked the hours which he felt was not so much a learning experience for him as it was the for making of profits for his employer. The sole function for him and his fellow employees was to provide money for the boss. An interesting take on his first experience in the commercial world. He was by no means left wing, although there was no doubt a leaning in that direction. Also I did not get the impression that he would remain an academic and he was paying his own way through university. There was something behind it all that led me to believe he had some political ambition in mind. Just what, how or where that would manifest itself in the future will be interesting to see.
So long as he keeps in mind the ethical questions and develops those essential skills for understanding quantitative evidence presented in writing and for interrogating data in public media and government reports, he night do rather well. I could not really begin to guess just what end of the political spectrum he will end up supporting, but there was a hint that the motive behind it all was some form of public service.
There was something about him that put me in mind of Peter Buttigieg who is the current United States Secretary of Transportation under President Biden, and previously the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard and Pembroke College, Oxford. Buttigieg also served in the United States Navy for 8 years in Naval Intelligence between 2009 and 2017. You might check him out on YouTube.
Monday 16th December 2024 - Continuing the thread on International Relations:
Looking at the current state of affairs in the Middle East, ethics and the limits of state powers seem to have gone astray. The Israeli Prime Minister is on trial for corruption and tries to deflect any and all accusations by presenting himself as the defender of the Nation. He shows no sign of letting up on his oppression in Gaza, takes full advantage of the collapse of the Syrian State by encroaching further into the Golan Heights and bombing Syrian naval installations under the guise of protection. I know there are some who would say such expediency, owing to the circumstances, is ethical and is well within the limits of State power. That the actions are completely illegal in accordance with United Nations directives would open that to question.
As to Assad, the fact of his flight from governing in Damascus to exile in Russia, was clearly something that must have been foreseen by the various rebel forces. Some intelligence must have given the insurgents the information that the Russian Air Force, or military, would no longer interfere, and that the Syrian Army were more that disinclined to put up much resistance. In consequence the speed with which the Assad overthrow took place, from the moment Aleppo was overrun, was a foregone conclusion. The dominos began to fall.
This has left us with a very confused state of affairs not only in Syria but in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine and Russia. Where and does the rest of the world weigh in. Recognition of a Palestinian State of some description is apparently on the cards, and which of the various factions now celebrating in Syria will actually form a lasting government capable of negotiating and making treaties that will hold.
I have no doubt that the leadership of the various states, their spokespersons and envoys would benefit from this course at Glasgow University. Indeed, some may have already had some formal education in International Relations, but I would strongly advise them to take a refresher course. I would equally advise representatives for Syria, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Russia and the Ukraine to at least peruse the reading list for Year 1 as described above.
None of this has anything to do with political systems, but with ethics and the obligations that one state has to another. We all want the same thing, recognition and respect. Why is that problematic? On the whole, political parties within individual nation states tolerate and accept differences of opinion, despite some rather severe criticism and accusations made against each other. It is even possible on an international scale if one takes into account the various sporting events which take place around the world. Where the Olympic games is being held has been problematic but usually takes place without serious difficulties. There is the odd exception. Saudi Arabia as a choice for the 2034 World Cup has attracted criticism, but will probably go ahead without incident. So what can be done about Middle Europe and the Middle East?
Getting all the parties back to school might just shake things up. A little higher education could perhaps promote the kind of thinking required to bring about ethical considerations concerning the limits of state power, conflict and political violence as well as obligations of one state towards another.
The tools are there, in every university across the world that holds seminars and lectures on Ethics, Politics, Philosophy, Economics and International Relations. Everybody can be smart, so why is it not working?
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