Sorry I didn’t post this earlier; I have been fighting with “Tagged” all weekend.  Apparently, they sent out another round of invites.  I apologize, again, twice as deeply.  I would suggest tagging the Tagged invite as “spam” in your email program…it might be the only way to get it to stop.  ACK.

Tuesday, we’ll be talking about What is the What.  Keep reading.

As far as conference topics go, I see three potential avenues.

First, we could talk about human rights and humanitarian intervention.  For example, should we intervene in Darfur to protect the people of that area of Sudan?  Is intervention justified when a state abuses its own people?  You might remember that one of the logics at work in the Afghanistan intervention was to “liberate” the women there under the rule of the Taliban…is this reason enough to violate state sovereignty?

Possible roles:  representatives could come from the US, EU, Save Darfur Coalition, Darfur, Sudanese government, SPLA, etc…

Second, we could talk about general human rights, perhaps attached to a particular treaty.  For example, we could discuss the benefits and disadvantages of giving the UN more power to enforce human rights treaties.  Here’s a list of the major human rights treaties.

Possible roles: US, UN, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, human rights non-profit

Third, we could focus on the rights of women and children (which was sort of in the mix).  So, something like discussing the virtues of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.  Or, alternatively, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We might, for example, discuss whether or not the United States should ratify one of these conventions (which I don’t believe we have done yet.)

Possible roles: evangelical Christians, NOW,  Planned Parenthood, anti-slavery organizations, equal pay advocates…this would be a little more domestically oriented as far as roles…

What do you think?

Last Thursday, I gave everyone a little strip of paper with their grades to date on it.  This way, you’ll have a good sense of “where you stand” in the class.

First number:  random, used to put you into groups

Second number: portfolio #1

Third number: leading discussion grade, from me

Fourth number: leading discussion grade, from the class

The rest of the numbers are participation grades.  Each grade is out of five; the first number in the set of two is the grade you gave yourself for participation that day.  The second number is the grade I gave you.  Each set of two numbers, then, represents one day of participation.  If you have two zeroes in a row, that is a zero from you and a zero from me, for a total of 0/10 points for that day.

Hope that helps.  If anyone has any questions, let me know.