Honors Courses (2027 Sessions)

In a post-truth world, we wrestle with questions such as, “What is evidence?” “What is enough evidence?” “Is objectivity irrelevant or even possible?” And, most basically, “What is news anyway?” News. Evidence. Truth? will examine the strategies and rhetorical nature of investigative journalism to seek answers. Through case histories and by interviewing highly regarded journalists, the class will analyze how media organizations executed text, aural, and visual investigations to achieve persuasive findings.

Students will put theory into practice by assuming the roles of newsroom reporters to collaboratively produce stories. They will gain a heightened understanding of journalism and deepened insights into the interplay of fact, point of view, and clashing rhetoric in the media.

The course is an intensive interdisciplinary course that approaches climate change not as a single scientific problem but as a complex human challenge requiring fluency across three connected domains: mathematical sciences, public policy, and the arts. In it, students build the conceptual scaffolding needed to interpret evidence, question assumptions, compare alternative solutions, and communicate responsibly about an uncertain future.

The mathematical-sciences portion establishes the physical foundation of the course. Students examine the changing climate system, the greenhouse effect, rising temperatures, ocean circulation, acidification, intensifying hurricanes, melting ice sheets, sea-level rise, and forest fires. Scientific ideas are presented through accessible models, visualizations, satellite observations, and selected demonstrations. Rather than emphasizing advanced calculation for its own sake, the course uses mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology to help students assess trends and distinguish credible claims from unsupported assertions.

The policy portion turns from diagnosis to response. Students investigate mitigation, including carbon removal and replacement of carbon-based energy, and adaptation or stabilization strategies, including solar-radiation management, biological interventions, and engineering concepts intended to protect vulnerable glaciers and communities. Every proposed response is treated as both a technical possibility and a governance problem. Students consider who benefits, who bears risk, what institutions should decide, how Indigenous and local communities may be affected, and whether actions undertaken by one country can impose consequences on others. The course deliberately avoids presenting simple answers; its central practice is disciplined questioning.

The arts portion explores how people have observed, recorded, interpreted, and imagined environmental change. Historical journals, paintings, photographs, music, literature, and records of polar exploration provide evidence of past landscapes and human reactions. Contemporary writing, film, and visual art show how artists represent climate anxiety, responsibility, loss, resilience, and possible futures. Students are encouraged to respond personally while also analyzing how artistic expression can influence public understanding.

The course also develops practical research habits: defining a question, locating appropriate evidence, testing competing explanations, acknowledging uncertainty, and presenting conclusions to different audiences. Because the cohort brings varied national and disciplinary perspectives, students will learn from one another’s experiences and examine how climate decisions change across regions, institutions, generations, and ethical traditions worldwide today.

Learning is active and discussion-based. Socratic dialogue, device-free debates, short written reflections, brief video explanations, and an individually chosen research project requires students to develop and express an independent point of view. By the end of the course, students should be able to connect climate mechanisms with policy choices and cultural meaning, communicate across disciplines, and leave with better questions, stronger analytical tools, and a more informed capacity to lead.

Enjoy this PBS news segment featuring Professor David Holland: youtube.com/watch?v=7oXpDLSYLBg

Human rights lawyers live by two simple ideas: “Everyday, we see things we want to change, but all too rarely do we actually change them. And it’s a long way from having a good idea to actually making it real.”

In this special course, a lifelong international law professor, human rights lawyer, and government official, operating both outside and inside the government, offers a theory and examples of how legal arguments can help bring about Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation. Each class will focus on a particular real-life case study: human rights litigation in U.S. domestic courts; litigation before the International Court of Justice and international arbitration tribunals; developing rules on the use of drones, cyberconflict, and artificial intelligence in warfare, using legal arguments to help build a new nation (Kosovo and Timor L’este), building a public interest law firm to uphold the rule of law in times of challenge, and using legal skills to help free human rights dissidents in authoritarian countries. Students will be asked to think imaginatively about and play real-life roles, and to make hard choices.

Most of all, students will be asked, “how does provoking confrontation achieve peace, justice, and reconciliation? And if those goals are in conflict, how does one choose among them?” A written examination, drafted without any help from artificial intelligence, will be required.

Hamlet is, among many other things, a searching investigation of the failure of leadership in the transition between one political order and another, and between one generation and the next. The play is also perhaps Shakespeare’s most sustained reflection on the passing of old and the emergence of new aesthetic forms. Within the criss-crossings of these two strands, the art of politics and the politics of art, Shakespeare stages what many have claimed as the greatest dramatization in Western literature of the birth of modern subjectivity. This course aims to introduce students to this rich complexity by reading Hamlet line by line over ten days. This exercise in slow reading is intended also as an invitation to think about the ways in which literature addresses pressing social and cultural concerns. Our reading will be supplemented with various filmed productions of Shakespeare’s play.