“EYES ONLY”: Reporting and Analyzing Key International Events
Good day, Governor’s Scholars. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to produce four weekly editions of the “Guvie Intelligence Bulletin.” Your project is modeled on the Central Intelligence Agency’s “National Intelligence Estimates.” Our topics will be the most immediate and critical international crises of the day. Perhaps you will seek to measure the strength of and evaluate the challenges coming from contemporary Mexico, Venezuela and Bolivia. Or you may examine the non-Arab Middle East by concentrating on Turkey and Iran. Or will it be the explosive combination of poverty, disease and ethnic rivalry in the Horn of Africa that receives your attention? Wherever these crises occur, you and your team of reporters, editors and publishers will delve deeply into all available sources to produce timely, accurate and penetrating analyses of these issues for fellow Guvies, counselors and faculty. Do you know the characteristics of a “failed state?” Do you know how to conduct a “risk assessment?” You will know both by the end of Governor’s School. You will look for information from Caracas to Karachi and follow the credo of “get it right and get it done.”

Understanding Globalization
We are now in a new millennium and facing monumental possibilities and challenges. Decisions made in the U.S. and abroad will determine whether or not the world (including the U.S.) becomes a better place or an arena of growing misery—and for whom. Many of the issues are international in scope. They include war, crime, poverty, political oppression, environmental degradation, population pressures, and gender inequality. We will examine these and other issues and relate them to a complex phenomenon known as “globalization.” Globalization is a process linking the world’s people together through trade, travel, and communications. Will our growing contact and interdependence usher in a new era of prosperity and peace, or will it intensify global inequality, conflict, and the deterioration of the environment on which all life depends?

Leaders, Liars and Outliers: Getting Things Done in a Global Community
Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini; Mother Theresa, Princess Diana and Prime Minister Merkel are well-known names in political and other leadership circles, but who really decides what happens on a daily basis in most people’s lives? For every internationally known leader, there are scores of community leaders – the people who make a difference to the people around them. They are the non-profit workers, safety and health providers, educators, publishers, small business owners, faith-based volunteers, filmmakers, pastors, and human rights advocates. These individuals exist in every part of the world, and their work is grounded on the simple philosophy that “all problems are local, all solutions are local, and all resources are local.” We will explore theories and styles of leadership and identify known and lesser-known practitioners typifying each. We will discuss current social, economic, and political problems in the context of successful heads of states as well as those who failed. Additionally, we will introduce the nontraditional leaders who contribute to the well-being of the world each day. Bring your heroes with you.

Prejudice, Discrimination, Racism, and Heterosexism 
Although the United States exists in the popular imagination as a diverse “melting-pot” of cultures, races, and ways of life, the reality is far different. Historical and contemporary issues of racial disparity and gay rights speak to the need for an examination of our cultural values.  This course will focus on human diversity as a difference, not as a deficit, and the social and emotional effects of racism and heterosexism. Together we will explore political and social justice systems, economic disparity, the media, and educational institutions, and how they interact to help form our views on race and sexual orientation.  Experiential sessions and classroom lectures on such topics as power standardized testing, majority privilege, language, literature, and social distancing will provide the vocabulary and ideas with which we can begin to examine our own attitudes about prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.   Through group projects, student presentations, frank discussions, and in-class workshops we will confront the “isms” of American culture.  By confronting and learning about these issues, we will begin to understand the ways in which our opinions are formed, and possibly, how we might begin to change them. 

Psychology of World Events
It’s interesting... this new millennium seems to be the future for which we have all been preparing. And yet, are we any more prepared for today’s events than we were in the past? Psychology may hold one of the keys for understanding our world and the world to come. Global issues should rightly be concerned with such things as our relationship to each other as Americans, international relations, the environment, and political and economic issues. When we translate these into terms of interpersonal and group relations, human perception, and decision-making, it is clear that the field of psychology is all-important to understanding the behavior of governments, societies, and individuals within those societies. In this section of global issues, in addition to discussing and learning about the current state of world problems, we will deal with such issues as reducing the “-isms” (e.g., racism, sexism, and nationalism), interpersonal and international conflict, and how our individual values and views of the world determine our behavior as one of earth's "citizens." Finally, we will attempt to define ways to use foresight, which may help us control our common destinies.

Global Perspectives on Human Rights
This course examines the relationship between globalization and universal standards for protecting human rights. In addition to exploring the concept of universal human rights standards, students will consider the impact of culture on human rights norms. A central theme of the course will be the relationship between social and economic rights, gender, and human rights. The Rwandan genocide, Darfur, and the application of human rights standards to wartime conduct will be among the topics covered in further developing the basic theme. Course materials will include books, academic articles, film, and guest speakers.

Conflicts and Crises: The Middle East and Africa
The Middle East and Africa are two regions of critical importance to the United States. Yet despite the increased news coverage of the areas (especially of the Middle East), these are the two areas of the world that most Americans know the least about. Such events as the terrorism perpetrated by Osama bin Laden, the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the continuing and very bloody Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and the seemingly endless civil wars and genocide in Africa are virtually incomprehensible to most Americans. To understand these areas of the world and the issues that have an impact on us requires a clear and objective analysis of the histories, cultures, politics, and economics of this part of the globe. We will explore the major conflicts and crises that mark the Middle East and Africa as well as the role that the United States has played in these volatile regions.

The Holocaust in Film
The Holocaust touches a small number of Americans directly, yet it looms large in the American moral landscape. Dramatic films about the killing of the Jews and other groups deemed by the Nazis as “unworthy of life” have impressed the Holocaust into popular consciousness, shaped conventional ways of thinking and helped to create a collective memory of the event. We will view films meant to dramatize, document, or in the case of German propaganda films, to provoke the attempted eradication of the Jewish people during World War II. We will then discuss what we have seen and ask tough questions about the potential of film to accurately depict the Holocaust, the role of the documentary filmmaker, the entertainment value of genocide, the violation of victims’ and survivors’ privacy, voyeurism and atrocity, memory and mourning. We will investigate these films as records of the darkest hour in the history of the Jewish people.