POL SCI 139
Special Studies in International Relations
Description: Lecture, three or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: two courses in Field II, or course 20 and one course in Field II. Designed for juniors/seniors. Intensive examination of one or more special problems appropriate to international relations. Sections offered on regular basis, with topics announced in preceding term. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
4 of 5
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - I took 139: The Cold War as one of the first few classes at UCLA. At first glance, it appears to be quite manageable. One discussion board a week, graded on completion IMO. His lectures were dry at some points. However, his dry humor kept me going; as a lecturer, I don't believe he was necessarily bad. One essay where we watched a movie and drew insights from the course, in addition to taking an in-person midterm and final. For the final, he gave us a cheat sheet. I'll explain why in a minute. The content itself was pretty interesting, and not new if you had taken APUSH, APGovV, or some other history class about the Cold War. So, I was pretty confident, but when that first midterm came around, I kid you not, I felt like I was taking an LSAT. Those questions were among the most confusing and twisted wording I had ever encountered. So, I thought I did okay, and instead, I got a 70% after the curve, which completely screwed me over. I even asked Pike himself, and he was surprised by how badly we did as a class. For the final, he gave us a cheat sheet where we could put as much information as possible on a small note card. So, I took the final and scored a 69% with the aid of a cheat sheet. In my mind, I was completely fuming because I finished the class with a B-, and I'm a transfer student who came in with a 4.0. That was my first B ever in undergrad, and I was so pissed and still am today. Pretty sure the format has remained the same in some of his other classes, but I'm gonna stay away from him for the time being. You would look elsewhere for an easier class, because this will drain your confidence level and completely catch you off guard.
Fall 2024 - I took 139: The Cold War as one of the first few classes at UCLA. At first glance, it appears to be quite manageable. One discussion board a week, graded on completion IMO. His lectures were dry at some points. However, his dry humor kept me going; as a lecturer, I don't believe he was necessarily bad. One essay where we watched a movie and drew insights from the course, in addition to taking an in-person midterm and final. For the final, he gave us a cheat sheet. I'll explain why in a minute. The content itself was pretty interesting, and not new if you had taken APUSH, APGovV, or some other history class about the Cold War. So, I was pretty confident, but when that first midterm came around, I kid you not, I felt like I was taking an LSAT. Those questions were among the most confusing and twisted wording I had ever encountered. So, I thought I did okay, and instead, I got a 70% after the curve, which completely screwed me over. I even asked Pike himself, and he was surprised by how badly we did as a class. For the final, he gave us a cheat sheet where we could put as much information as possible on a small note card. So, I took the final and scored a 69% with the aid of a cheat sheet. In my mind, I was completely fuming because I finished the class with a B-, and I'm a transfer student who came in with a 4.0. That was my first B ever in undergrad, and I was so pissed and still am today. Pretty sure the format has remained the same in some of his other classes, but I'm gonna stay away from him for the time being. You would look elsewhere for an easier class, because this will drain your confidence level and completely catch you off guard.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2018 - Radd is a tremendous professor. He's charming, charismatic, funny, and makes the material very interesting with his teaching style. I was fortunate to take his class -- he made it engaging and worth attending. He's the opposite of those unapproachable, cold and overly-serious professors who roam the halls of Bunche; he's what this school needs more of. Take his class if you can. Any one of them.
Summer 2018 - Radd is a tremendous professor. He's charming, charismatic, funny, and makes the material very interesting with his teaching style. I was fortunate to take his class -- he made it engaging and worth attending. He's the opposite of those unapproachable, cold and overly-serious professors who roam the halls of Bunche; he's what this school needs more of. Take his class if you can. Any one of them.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - I have taken a few courses focused on diaspora, specifically indigenous and was therefore intrigued by this political science class. I really enjoyed the materials and the readings, as they were very general and not too specific for a 10-week course, which I liked. However, the class is very unorganized, as are the midterms and finals. The midterm was split into in person and take-home with the exact same format, which was odd. If you have to take this class, I hope the TA is great, because that is the only thing that saved this class for me. Vincent was great and provided as much as he could with the little information the professor gave. Attendance became mandatory because a lot of students would not show up, and it is probably due to the fact that it felt useless to the course as the professor spoke so slowly and incoherently. She seemed nice, but as it was her first time teaching ever, it makes sense. Also, the grading changed a lot throughout the weeks, which I think is unfair and not beneficial to the students (extra credit was decreased from 10% to much lower).
Winter 2024 - I have taken a few courses focused on diaspora, specifically indigenous and was therefore intrigued by this political science class. I really enjoyed the materials and the readings, as they were very general and not too specific for a 10-week course, which I liked. However, the class is very unorganized, as are the midterms and finals. The midterm was split into in person and take-home with the exact same format, which was odd. If you have to take this class, I hope the TA is great, because that is the only thing that saved this class for me. Vincent was great and provided as much as he could with the little information the professor gave. Attendance became mandatory because a lot of students would not show up, and it is probably due to the fact that it felt useless to the course as the professor spoke so slowly and incoherently. She seemed nice, but as it was her first time teaching ever, it makes sense. Also, the grading changed a lot throughout the weeks, which I think is unfair and not beneficial to the students (extra credit was decreased from 10% to much lower).
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - This class is supposed to be a seminar class (30 students taught directly by Traeger). But due to a "department error", when I took it (Fall 2021), it was structured as a lecture with circa 100 students and 2 TAs. Traeger is a fairly run-of-the-mill UCLA Poli Sci Professor. He's clearly brilliant and accomplished, but he imbues the same “I have plenty of important things to do, this class is largely an errand” attitude as 80% of the tenured political-science faculty here do. Readings were heavy and didn't feel particularly well organized. Lecture consisted of him loosely ranting while slides were largely blank (containing of only a few words or unlabeled infographics). If you asked him a question that was related to something remotely logistical, his response was always “just ask your TA”. He also canceled class... twice. He'd make efforts to rile-up enthusiasm (he often posed open-ended questions to the class), but they usually fell flat. Grading-wise, the syllabus initially consisted of 2 prompt-less short papers (4-5 pages) that correspond to 2-week's readings of your choosing (basically you just discuss the readings or tie them together, not always easy). The final was originally a 12-15 page no-prompt research paper, later shortened to 10 pages by our TAs. This was pretty hellish and unclear. The guidelines were to develop an original international relations theory and devise a statistical test to see if it's legitimate. That approaches graduate-level work and was super difficult. Thankfully the TA's went pretty easy grading wise. I have a feeling that Traeger's grading would've been different. This class was fine in lecture-format (with TA's as graders), but I have a feeling it would be much harder and more unclear with Trager as it's main instructor. I would avoid this class in general-- especially if it's in a seminar format.
Fall 2021 - This class is supposed to be a seminar class (30 students taught directly by Traeger). But due to a "department error", when I took it (Fall 2021), it was structured as a lecture with circa 100 students and 2 TAs. Traeger is a fairly run-of-the-mill UCLA Poli Sci Professor. He's clearly brilliant and accomplished, but he imbues the same “I have plenty of important things to do, this class is largely an errand” attitude as 80% of the tenured political-science faculty here do. Readings were heavy and didn't feel particularly well organized. Lecture consisted of him loosely ranting while slides were largely blank (containing of only a few words or unlabeled infographics). If you asked him a question that was related to something remotely logistical, his response was always “just ask your TA”. He also canceled class... twice. He'd make efforts to rile-up enthusiasm (he often posed open-ended questions to the class), but they usually fell flat. Grading-wise, the syllabus initially consisted of 2 prompt-less short papers (4-5 pages) that correspond to 2-week's readings of your choosing (basically you just discuss the readings or tie them together, not always easy). The final was originally a 12-15 page no-prompt research paper, later shortened to 10 pages by our TAs. This was pretty hellish and unclear. The guidelines were to develop an original international relations theory and devise a statistical test to see if it's legitimate. That approaches graduate-level work and was super difficult. Thankfully the TA's went pretty easy grading wise. I have a feeling that Traeger's grading would've been different. This class was fine in lecture-format (with TA's as graders), but I have a feeling it would be much harder and more unclear with Trager as it's main instructor. I would avoid this class in general-- especially if it's in a seminar format.
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4 of 5
