"True Facts"

How can you find a reliable answer to a question you are curious about? How could you convince someone your answer was reasonable if they didn’t already agree with you? This course is the place to think about how to find good answers to important questions. In a world with so many sources of mis-information and so many chances to simply have our biases confirmed, it is important to think clearly about how we look for information, how we evaluate it, and what conclusions we draw from it.

“TRUE FACTS” is a new course in International Studies that connects important questions in our world—

  • what is happening in Ukraine and why? 
  • how can we combat human trafficking? 
  • what’s the story with climate change? 
  • and more

—with multidisciplinary tools for finding answers. How can you find a reliable source to read or watch? When are interviews practical and helpful? How can you make sense of lots of quantitative data? And so on.

It is an upper-division course open to all majors and will meet upper-division hour requirements. It also fills an upper-division elective requirement for the International Studies Major. 

 

Spring 2024

Prof. Andrew Barnes

INTS 30001 

Tuesday/Thursday 2:15-3:30