FRS 001Q - Sec. 001 - (2 units) - CRN 83060 - W 9:00-10:50 AM - 2030 Engineering III
Freedom vs. Security: America’s Continuing Quandary

Instructor: Richard Freeman, Department of Applied Science, College of Engineering

Description: This course will examine the current tension between constitutional guarantees of freedom and notional ideas of privacy in American vs. society’s desire to be “safe” from terrorism. The course will derive the basic issues that define this tension, and relate them to historical precedents in American history. Finally, the participants will attempt to delineate the degree to which any society under stress can afford to set aside guiding principles of organization in order to guarantee safety. Students will be challenged to think of proposed measures for the restrictions of personal freedoms and privacy in terms of society’s rightful objectives of order and safety. They will be offered the opportunity to view our current crisis in this conflict as a long standing tension between freedom and security that has been around since the earliest days of the republic. In so doing, they will learn from the examples of the past how decisions made during times of stress live on in the changes of the expectations of liberty for the future. They will be asked to take positions, research them, construct arguments for them, and then defend them in debate.

Format: The format will be a two hour meeting, once a week, with discussion and review of research by the students, groupings of students around general points of contention and the preparation for a debate on the subject of “Freedom vs. Security”. Outside speakers of note, from the campus and the national defense laboratories will be included in at least 2 of the 8 meetings of the seminar. Research will be mainly web-based, with special emphasis on understanding how to qualify research sources. There will be one 2-hour required meeting a week, with optional one-on-one time with the instructor by prior arrangement. The research will be conducted outside of this time period. Assignments will be developed on a week to week basis as directed by the development of the arguments. There will be a 5 page term paper required. Grading: Class discussion and participation will constitute 30% of the grade, class attendance is will be mandatory. 20% of the grade will be determined by the quality of the oral argument presented by each student during the debate(s), and 50% of the grade will be determined by the 5 page Term Paper.

About the Instructor:
Richard Freeman is the Chair of the Department of Applied Science, and the Edward Teller Professor of Applied Science. He has worked professionally in virtually all areas of physical science, defense programs, and national security. He teaches a popular upper-division course EAD 137, Nuclear Arms and Arms Control, which examines the root causes of the Cold War, the physical basis of weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of terrorism in global affairs. He grew up as an anti-war demonstrator in the times of Vietnam, and has served in Africa in the Peace Corps. He is widely read in the history of war and aggression within the American context, and is particularly interested in the "American Experiment" in individual freedoms and privacy.