Oh my god terrible terrible. This class was SUCH a waste of time. It is a disgrace how little I learned in a class about our own country's foreign policy from a man who is a leader within the corporate world. His 2hour once a week classes were boring, with a simple outline read out by him (essentially thats what it was) instead of a deep intellectual lecture. He would list the major issues about the topic discussed (such as Economic policy, American Empire), as if he were making a list of major topics highlighted by the newspapers in the past year. In between points within the outline he would pause for like 5 minutes to see if anyone had questions. It almost seemed like he was praying someone would speak up so he wouldnt have to talk. It seemed to me he is just doing to the class to say that he is a professor at Columbia.
His class relied on a ridiculous amount of readings for the bulk of any intellectual stimulus. Many readings were not really relavent and others were impossible to find. I felt that he threw together a list and expected us to read all of it.
His class only consists of a midterm and final both of whihc are basically solely based on readings. With heavy reliance on a huge list of readings and a terrible lecture class that did not reinforece the readings or even connect with all of them, its hard to get a good grade in this class. So you watse your time, get frustrated, learn nothing, and hurt your GPA.
Skip Matthews. Take Am foregn policy with the other professor who teaches it.