reflection after three weeks of classes

Yes. Three weeks. It doesn’t seem like it, in part because of Labor Day so we’ve only had five (and not six) class meetings, and in part because the past three class sessions involved an ongoing game — really two parallel ongoing games — of Diplomatic Risk rather than a more traditional set of bounded class activities. But tomorrow we start week four already. And before you know it we’ll be at mid-semester and it wil be time for analytical essays...

But before that we get to go through and discuss Machiavelli and Locke and a number of other authors. Hopefully this allows the class members to draw out the various theoretical principles that were implicit in the Diplomatic Risk set-up: in the goals that teams had to pursue, in the rules of the game itself, in the dynamic interactions between teams on the map and in the World Council and in the hallways (literally). The whole point of the exercise was to give people some “synthetic experiences” that we can draw on for subsequent conversations. Obviously the gaps between the game and the wider world of international affairs are just as fair game as the parallels, and I hope that over the next few weeks we’ll be able to explore both.

Plus, if I am being honest, it’s just a lot more fun to play Diplomatic Risk in class than it is for me to talk about theoretical perspectives on international affairs. I could, obviously. But that would feel largely like a waste of all of our time. My hope is that by approaching those perspectives indirectly and implicitly, through experience rather than through explicit delineation, everyone will develop a better practical sense of what they entail. I mean, I don't even have to say anything about trust under conditions of anarchy now, because everyone experienced the breakdowns that can occur when sovereign entities make deals but then one party reneges or backs out.

I also tried a little experiment this year, putting up a blog question that asked the students to think about the “Athenian thesis” in the context of the novel we read at the beginning of the semester, by presenting a brief but contextualized except from Thucydides. I think it was largely successful; several insightful posts explored the way that even using power for good turns into the pursuit of power in order to do good, and then into simply the pursuit of power almost as an end in itself. Awiti’s tragedy may be that she lost herself, but because of her immortality she cannot simply fade away but persists indefinitely. The lessons there for us are something we still have to explore, I think.