Becoming a Political Analyst

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor

In this course, students will learn how to become political analysts skill-by-skill. Political analysts are specialists in an area of knowledge, such as a country (e.g., a Syria expert), a functional area (e.g., a terrorism expert), or some combination of the two whose job is to provide salient analysis on their area of expertise. Political analysts often work in government, the corporate world, non-profits, NGOs, or in think tanks to inform and advise decision-makers and policymakers. In this course, every student will select a desired ‘expertise’ that they will begin to develop over the course of the semester. In order to ensure the professor can properly guide the students, each will choose a specialty from a finite, but long list of Middle East countries or relevant functional areas (e.g., military, nuclear, energy, illicit finance, terrorism, etc). For the rest of the semester, students will become political analysts by doing exactly what an analyst would do every day/week. Each student will keep a weekly tracker of related news and analysis on his/her selected specialty and write a news brief similar to a ‘daily brief’ in the government. The tracker will form the bulk of their reading for each week and will serve as the foundation for workshops on specific skill sets, such as interviewing a source, doing a media interview, or writing an analytic piece. This course will be heavily activity-based. This course is best for students who seek to enter a career in government, intelligence, military analysis, political analysis, think tanks, or journalism.