Reminder: First Year End of Year Reflection Papers are due today at 5:00PM. Email them directly to me.

Also, I will be responding to them over the next few days as I will be giving you all some feedback!

Reminder to everyone that we have our final First-Year Meeting tonight! The topic for the meeting will be: “Is there such a thing as a natural disaster?” Below are the two articles we will be focusing on for the meeting:

First article: http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/natural-hazards-unnatural-disasters-understanding-disasters-in-the-context-of-development – Written by Terry Cannon, Research Fellow for the Institute of Development Studies, who briefly discusses the social construction of disasters through the lens of development.

Second article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-parker/japan-tsunami_b_1335737.html – Written by Bruce Parker, former Chief Scientist of the National Ocean Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who looks at tsunami preparedness, or lack thereof, in the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku (Japanese) Earthquake and Tsunami.

Our first year meeting on Thursday will revolve around a discussion on Liberal democracy and human rights in China. At first it may seem like a simple discussion, but you know would not make it that easy. 🙂

While we will be watching a 15 minute clip on the topic, it would be great if  you could do some background research on the topic for the meeting. We will be structuring the meeting like last month’s, so small and large group discussion will be important.