Introduction to World Politics

IR 101 is your entry point into thinking systematically about why states, organizations, and people behave the way they do across borders — less a tour of current events and more a toolkit of concepts and theoretical lenses (realism, liberalism, and their critical challengers) you'll use to make sense of anything from wars and trade deals to climate negotiations and pandemics. The work is mostly reading, weekly tutorials where you practice arguing with the theories, two quizzes, and exams that test whether you can apply the right level of analysis rather than just recite definitions. As the gateway to the IR major, it sets up the vocabulary and analytical habits that every later course — security, IPE, foreign policy — assumes you already have.