This was one of my favorite classes, if not my favorite class, I've taken at UCLA! Dean Segura was an amazing professor and I would highly highly recommend taking the course with him if you can. I genuinely felt so interested in what we were learning, and was honestly excited about the essay prompts we were given too! Even if some of the readings we got were a little lengthy, Professor Segura did a really good job explaining them in lecture and I felt like I learned a lot! Highly recommend!!

Take this class!!! Professor Segura is an incredible lecturer and this class is such a great opportunity to learn from the dean of the Public Affairs department. The lectures were always engaging and interesting and assignments were relevant and thought-provoking. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in politics or history!

TLDR: This class is overall somewhat easy and engaging, with a light workload. Your TA determines your final grade so participate and go to their office hours. 2/3 of your grade is essay based so if you are a good writer then it should be easier to get an A. If you aren't a good writer, getting an A is definitely doable if you really grind the midterm and final essay.

The first half of the course is more theory based and more boring to me, the lectures are about democracy, the constitution, etc. The second half of the class is more interesting, with lectures focusing on racism, sexism, classism, and the intersections between them. I took this class completely in person, but Segura posted the slides as well as the recording of lectures on Bruincast and the recorded lectures from last year when it was online. There is no participation or tests in lecture needed so you could miss any lecture and not be negatively affected. There is no textbook, just weekly readings posted so no out of pocket costs.

Discussion is worth 34% of your grade and is basically mandatory to be there (unless you contact your TA). In my discussion, the weekly homework was to post one paragraph review of the class readings to a discussion post . You also had to sign up to lead one discussion with 2 other students. This was a 15-20 minute group presentation with slides about the readings of the week. It wasn't too much work (1-2 hour preparation max). You also had to talk and participate in discussion weekly to get points. I got a 100% in discussion and the mean and median were a 96%, so pretty easy to do well in that. The midterm and final essay were worth 33% each. Both essays were a 5-7 page research paper based on class readings and outside sources. The TA's also grade those essays but you can ask them for help in office hours. You only get 5 days to write the essay once the prompts are released so it is a little annoying that the midterm and final could fall on a busy weekend. There are no other tests, quizzes, or essays, so the workload is relatively easy even though there are a lot of readings.

Professor Segura was a super engaging lecturer and was inviting and friendly in office hours. I can't say enough good things about his class. His lectures were recorded, and the assigned class times were used for required Q&A and optional office hours, where he went deeper into or clarified the material where there was student interest. I also really appreciated that instead of the lectures covering just the key points of the required texts, Professor Segura gave important context and presented more material. The one place where he could have improved is giving context about some of the more difficult texts earlier, so do ask about that in the Q&As if he doesn't mention it. I didn't find the actual discussions particularly valuable, but the overviews of the material my TA gave were absolutely key in helping me understand and get through some of the difficult texts.

PA 50 should be named "Introduction to Democratic and Social Theory." The first half of the class was about theories of democracy, politics, justice, and the second half was about race, gender, and class and how they intersect with democracy. It was a super interesting and foundational class in social sciences that definitely should be GE. I highly recommend taking Professor Segura's class. You'll learn a lot, and I promise you that the moderate workload is worth the effort!

Professor Segura is wonderful! He is super engaging and nice, but there is a lot of required readings (and the readings are often older philosophical or political dialogues so they can be difficult to get through). However, if you balance your work load and participate a lot in discussion you will do great. I also had an amazing TA (shoutout Ryan Dougherty - he is phenomenal and super helpful). I highly encourage students to take this class.

I love Professor Segura! He hosted office hours every week for us to come in and ask questions about the readings or anything (we had a special Election Day meeting where he answered questions about the election). The main portions of the class were discussion (which really only consisted of asking two questions on a discussion forum every week and a group project), and two essays--a final and a midterm. The essays were given with very short notice (we only got around 4-5 days to work on it), but the prompts were extremely interesting and relevant! The only complaint I had was that the readings are extremely long, sometimes 100-200 pages in a week. They are interesting although they are dense.

The class was asynchronous, and there was only one mandatory live class we had after the election. Both midterm and final essays were graded by the TA's, which can make or break your grade if you have a tough grader, since those were essentially the only components of your grade. We were required to facilitate discussion once with a group, based on that week's readings. Live office hours were great, as we got to discuss a variety of current events going on at the time.

Dean Segura is really knowledgeable, and he could answer basically any question that you asked him during lecture. During covid, all lectures were pre-recorded and there were two essays which made up 2/3 of your grade (other third is participation). The concepts aren't terribly difficult to master and you could probably get by without doing ALL of the reading, but it's all really interesting so it's not hard to do it all. I think you read 5 or so books by the end of the quarter, but the lectures and notes are super well crafted and the assignments are super fair. TA grading, one group presentation in your discussion section

This class was awesome. I took this class during Spring 2020 when COVID-19 forced everyone home. Dean Segura and the TAs were extremely accommodating and kind. Dean Segura would post the lectures in advance and set time aside to answer questions during the class. The readings weren't really necessary as he covered everything in his lectures. The midterm and the final consisted of two papers that were pretty challenging but not too hard. Maria was also an awesome TA who was really understanding and helped break everything down.

The class is extremely interesting and the professor is also very good at explaining and catching our attention - if you work hard on your midterm and fine you’ll be fine overall. There’s also one discussion where you have to lead the class along with two or more other people, but it’s not as bad as it seems. Overall, great class, interesting material, engaging lectures.