<p>Do different professors teach this in different semesters? There seems to be only one professor teaching it in the fall (Mufti). Does anyone know anything about him/her? Is it a good idea to take this fall of freshman year if you intend to be an IR major or to wait and see who else may teach it in future semesters?</p>
<p>Based on what we’ve seen from prior schedules and syllabi, there are three-four profs who each teach it for a year. Taliaferro did both semesters last year, as did Greenhill a year or two before that. I would assume Mufti is teaching it both semesters this year.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to professor reviews (with Mufti): [JumboAccess.com:</a> Where You Review It First ! (Tufts University Professor Ratings and Reviews)](<a href=“JumboAccess.com: Where You Review It First ! (Tufts University Professor Ratings and Reviews)”>JumboAccess.com: Where You Review It First ! (Tufts University Professor Ratings and Reviews))</p>
<p>It looks like he gets excellent reviews BTW.</p>
<p>You’re right, different professors teach it in different semesters. It’s not always one per year. Greenhill, for example, I believe only taught one semester (I don’t know that they’ll ask her to teach it again - she’s great but she’s a bit too demanding for an intro-level course). Any poli sci professor with an IR focus could be called upon to teach Intro to IR, so in addition to Mufti, Taliaferro, and Greenhill, there’s also Eichenberg and Tony Smith. In a pinch, one of the non-tenured IR-focused poli sci faculty like Nancy Gleason or Katrina Swett could probably be asked to teach Intro to IR as well, though this is unlikely and would probably require multiple simultaneous sabbaticals.</p>
<p>I took Intro to IR with Mufti. I would actually say he’s the best prof to take it from. He’s extremely attentive to students, makes it easy to pick out the most important concepts and ideas, and is a pretty decent lecturer (though he definitely sounds not unlike Kermit the Frog with an accent). Taliaferro is strongly opinionated enough that he can be quite polarizing, Greenhill is an amazing professor but works you a bit hard for an intro class (don’t fail to take an upper-level course with her, though), and Eichenberg is a nice guy, but boring. I don’t know anything about Tony Smith.</p>
<p>I sat in on an American Foreign policy class with Prof. Mufti, and he was quite good.</p>
<p>As a parent I can’t recall most of the classes or professors S1 has had <em>except</em> for Taliaferro and Mufti (one is his advisor) and a few others (like Dennett and Gittleman). </p>
<p>Like Snarf he also felt that Taliaferro was pretty opinionated, but always found him interesting and liked him nonetheless. He says Mufti’s War and Empire class is the best he’s ever taken.</p>
<p>Yeah, I didn’t say Taliaferro was bad, just polarizing. Your son was apparently in the “pro-Taliaferro” pole ;-)</p>
<p>^reading his syllabus indicated that he was VERY nitpicky. there appeared to be a lot of seemingly insignificant things one could screw up and end up with a lot of 0s.</p>
<p>Take Intro to IR if you have any interest in majoring in IR. If you make it through the grueling semester and still adore IR, congrats, you know what to major in. I took it with Taliaferro last semester and I would recommend him only if you can tolerate an arrogant attitude and accept that you’re not going to get an A (seriously, this makes most people not take it with him, but I learned a TON in that class because he really is brilliant).
Some of my friends took it with Eichenberg first semester last year and couldn’t say enough good things about him, although he does give somewhat excessive amounts of reading (often 200 pages for one class). I have heard such good things about Eichenberg that I’m taking Public Opinion and Foreign Policy with him in the fall (I’m a poli sci major, not an IR major. I just don’t love it enough to do all those requirements!)
Mufti is not a professor I’m very familiar with, although I know several people who decided his reviews made him a worthy professor to take it with in the upcoming semester.</p>
<p>
Yeah, that’s about right. Taliaferro seems to be of the philosophy that students who did well and demonstrated thorough comprehension of the material should be happy with Bs, and reserves As for uniquely exceptional and outstanding work. I suspect that if given the opportunity, Taliaferro would award many of his colleagues Bs, and may even give many of his own papers Bs. He just doesn’t think As should be commonplace.</p>