The departmental goal is to cultivate in students a critical ability to interpret political questions from a variety of perspectives. As measures of our success in meeting this goal, we expect students to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the interconnections of political institutions, movements, concepts, and events from multiple intersecting vantage points;
• Identify important contested assumptions, ideas, and intellectual debates in politics scholarship;
• Pose critical questions about power relations as they investigate key political questions in a globalizing world;
• Conduct a focused academic inquiry that demonstrates a critical awareness of competing arguments in response to a key question, an ability to formulate a systematic path of analysis, and the capacity to generate creative findings based on original research.