Third World: A Penn Digit

Two idealistic Ivy League professors teach an insightful course on the shape of revolution in the modern era of globalization and create student delight!

OK, one last vignette, and it's about the agony and delight of education in modern politics, inspired by the film The War Room.

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On the prestigious modern campus of the University of Pennsylvania, two new young vibrant Ivy League professors, Isaac Satan and Maria Sharia, were about to offer an advanced undergraduate level political history course on the language and rhetoric of Third World revolutions. Isaac and Maria felt such a symbolic modern course would offer stimulated Ivy League students to think more sharply about worldly connections between new age anti-globalization terrorism (e.g., 9/11) and classical pillars about the formulations of governance transformation in adverse conditions (e.g., Rwanda). Isaac and Maria were thrilled to teach this new course on a rather symbolic American campus.

Isaac studied at Dartmouth and Harvard before doing field research on the perspectives on the illegal diamond trade in South Africa before accepting the UPenn teaching position with his colleague Maria where he could team up with her to teach the stirring symbolic course on Third World revolutions.

Maria studied at Cornell and Yale before accepting the UPenn teaching position where she'd teach the Third World revolutions course with Isaac. Maria was an admirer of Dr. Satan's work with diamond-trade related crimes in socially challenged South Africa.

The book Isaac and Maria used for the UPenn course was called Third World Liberation Theologies. The book was considered canon in the area of political transformation and was therefore the ideal resource for the bright UPenn students, which is why Isaac and Maria selected the work for their course.

Isaac and Maria's political history (POLHIS 99) course was called Third World: Revolution and Rhetoric. It drew in many interested students as well as political science and history majors at UPenn. The students were equally excited to be taught by the two prominent figures in new age political history and political science education, Dr. Satan and Dr. Sharia. The students were surprised and intrigued to discover their new professors, Isaac and Maria, were invested in using models of Third World dystopia to analyze the modern globalization process of anti-terrorism dialogue (e.g., eco-terrorism in Bolivia).

Isaac and Maria's students were fascinated by their course and wrote brilliant essays for their assignments. Nearly everyone in the course at UPenn was doing well, and Dr. Satan and Sharia were very pleased with these results. They realized the students were engaged by the modern analysis of processes of social mobilization as well as the formalization of governance modeling. This was, after all, the age of great network evaluations! Isaac and Maria then had the students in the course, near the end of the course, work on a giant mural together characterizing the pseudo-expressionism behind new age portrayals of democratic revolutions in politically challenged areas.

To celebrate the success of the course, Isaac and Maria had a fondue-party at their UPenn apartment and invited their top students from their POLHIS 99 course. The students enjoyed sharing some of the various interesting delicate foods Isaac prepared for the fondue dipping. The teachers and students talked fondly about the complexity of new era politics before enjoying a fun wined game of casual (non-Occult) Ouija!

ISAAC: Our students were so darn engaged.
MARIA: Well, revolutions are always exciting, Isaac.
ISAAC: I'm thrilled we started dating, Maria!

MARIA: Yes, we make a cute couple on campus now.
ISAAC: The students find Third World politics reflective!
MARIA: They make connections between poverty and poetry.
ISAAC: What's political history and science without poetry?
MARIA: Did you notice during our Ouija-session at our fondue-party that students were spooked?
ISAAC: Yes, I did; they seemed to think we successfully invoked the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi.
MARIA: Weird; I got the eerie cold breeze feeling that's just what happened, Isaac.
ISAAC: Who knows?
MARIA: I don't mind as long as such gameplay doesn't create bizarre Occult rumors on campus.
ISAAC: Yeah, we don't want to be labeled as 'radical' teachers nowadays.
MARIA: It's just simpler to approach modern politics through the lenses of surveys.
ISAAC: Right; we don't want to anger the spirits of history regret!
MARIA: Maybe 9/11 taught us all the 'frailty' of civilization dance.

ISAAC: That's a cool idea, Maria!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)