Hi my name is Jon Peterson. I'm an associate professor of political science
at North Park University. In this welcome video, I'm going to talk just a bit about
myself and introduce this course, POGO 1600 American Government. First a little
bit about me: I have been at North Park since 2009, I got my PhD in political
science from the University of Minnesota. Prior to graduate school, I worked for 3
and 1/2 years on Capitol Hill in Washington DC for a congressman from
Minnesota. I also worked for another three and a half years in the state
legislature in St. Paul in the communications department. So I had a
political life before starting academia. Since 2009 I've been teaching at
North Park. I previously taught at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and the University
of Minnesota. I am married; my wife Emily and I have four children. Now a little bit
about this course: American Government (POGO 1600) is a course in which we
explore the American political system, the institutions of that system, the
players in that system: elected officials, voters, citizens -- and although the players
and the issues might be new, the questions that are asked are quite old:
questions like What is justice? What is liberty? How did these things apply to
the contemporary environment? How much power should government have? and What is
the best way to decide about allocating resources? These are the central
questions of politics, and they are some of the questions that we'll address in
this course. You will see by looking at the modules of this course that there are 16
sections. We start the course by looking at a little bit of history, so we'll talk
about the American Founding; we'll talk about the Constitution; and we'll talk
about civil liberties civil rights and the federalist system that the
Constitution gave us. The middle section of this course is on the institutions
that link the American public to their government: things like interest
groups and social movements, political parties, elections, the media. We will end the
course by looking at the institutions of American government themselves:
the Congress, the presidency, the executive branch, the bureaucracy, and the
federal court system. Along the way, we'll be exploring a good bit of history, but
also looking at the contemporary setting. So the main text for this course will be
the Scott Abernathy American Government: Stories of a Nation, but we'll also be
using The New York Times and looking at how the questions that we're addressing
in this course have real application to contemporary society. So I hope you are
ready to ask some questions and explore their answers with me. After watching
this video, if you go forward in this course you will get a course overview,
including some of the learning objectives. I would ask you to take a
look at the course syllabus and then participate in a discussion in which you
introduce yourself to the other members of the class. From there you can start
with Module 1: The American Political Culture, and that section will
conclude with a brief quiz and an essay. And then the other 14 sections --
the other 14 modules -- will proceed from there.
Thank you for enrolling in this course. I look forward to meeting you and spending
these next few weeks together.
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