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Title: The Poor and Justice
Course Section Number: GHL-212-01
Department: Global Health
Description: HYBRID COURSE. NOT AVAILABLE TO VIRTUAL LEARNERS. GHL-212=PSC-212=HIS-240-01=PPE-234. UPDATED COURSE DESCRIPTION: The economic impact of the current global pandemic, including the evictions it will cause, reflects a harsh reality:  tens of millions of Americans still live in poverty although this is the richest nation on earth.  What should government do about this?  From the New Deal to the present, have our federal, state and local poverty initiatives done more harm or good?  Have government benefits lifted citizens out of poverty or created dependency that traps them in poverty? Has government integrated citizens or continued to segregate them based upon race or wealth?  Or should the focus instead be on our courts?  Do they extend equal justice to the poor, or do they favor landlords and others with whom the poor do business?  This is a critical time to ask these questions.  Even before the pandemic struck, America had one of the highest levels of economic inequality and one of the lowest levels of economic mobility in its own history and among other industrialized nations.  In addition, while the poor are participating less in politics, wealthy Americans are participating and funding more and more.  Given the importance and difficulty of these issues, we will consider a wide variety of views including those of liberals, conservatives and libertarians. We will ground our study not only in history but also in the present, lived experience of the urban poor as reported in Matthew Desmond's Evicted and the rural poor as reported in JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.
Credits: 1.00
Start Date: January 25, 2021
End Date: May 11, 2021
Meeting Information:
01/26/2021-05/04/2021 Lecture Tuesday, Thursday 09:45AM - 11:00AM, Baxter Hall, Room 114
Faculty: Himsel, Scott

Course Status & Cross-Listings

Cross-list Group Capacity: 15
Cross-list Group Student Count: 17
Calculated Course Status: CLOSED
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