Foreign Policy

We’ll examine how demographics (especially the distribution of ages amongst a population) affects a country’s profile–economic growth, productivity, income distribution, retirement programs, etc. And how countries adapt to differing profiles–from heavily skewed toward older (Monaco and Japan) to those with far more children (more than a dozen countries where the median is less than 18 years old).

Here are some articles thoughtfully provided by Marion (sorry for the late post):

• Population Age Structure and Pathways to Inclusive Effective Governance
• Population Aging as a Global Issue

The term “genocide” has been used to describe a wide range of activities over the last several decades. On Monday, we’ll discuss:

• how the term is defined in international law (and elsewhere),
• how contemporary genocide is “policed,” prosecuted, and punished,
• what sort of repercussions (reparations?) are appropriate for “contemporary” instances of genocide, and
• how “historical” instances of genocide should be dealt with in the present.

Thanks to Steven K., here are some resources to consider:

• The United Nations definition of “genocide” (with associated materials nearby on the website)
• Selected pages from A Little Matter of Genocide by (controversial) author Ward Churchill