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AIDS and the Political Science Classroom

No contemporary emergency has as devastating an effect on society as the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. Figures in the United States alone give insight into the gravity of this crisis (HIV/ AIDS Surveillance, October 1991). Approximately 200,000 people have contracted AIDS, with over 50,000 developing symptoms within the last 12 months. Sixty percent of those with AIDS prior to September 1989 are now dead. Perhaps as many as one percent of the American population-more than 2.5 million people-are infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. It is an epidemic that does not discriminate on the bases of race, gender, class, geography, ideology, or political affiliation. AIDS is a medical crisis, but it is unlike other diseases. The homosexual stigma attached to AIDS, as well as misunderstandings and misguided fears about modes of transmission, result in a multitude of social and economic ramifications. Equally devastating, however, are its political and bureaucratic dimensions. Government may not have invented the disease, but it seems to have contributed significantly to the intensity of the epidemic. Today, as throughout the 1980s, politicians are reluctant to develop sound policies that address the needs of people with AIDS. Public administrators share politicians' concern about the consequences of directing resources toward a disease of which the victims are still overwhelmingly gay men and intravenous drug users. At all levels of government, institutional bias and self-interest tend to prevail over goals to develop effective and compassionate responses to the AIDS crisis. It is perplexing to find political scientists paying only scant attention to this crisis. This epidemic offers the opportunity to pose a variety of research questions about politics and power and to do so from the perspective of just about every subfield. But little research is coming from our discipline, as is indicated by the single panel on AIDS at the most recent annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.2 The limited amount of research is only matched by the time spent on AIDS in most political science classrooms. This is surprising because the political ramifications of AIDS are always in the news. It is even more surprising since, unlike other topics covered in political science courses, AIDS has an immediate and direct bearing on the lives of our students. Public announcements of young seropositive celebrities, like basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, makes this point all too apparent. Approximately one-in-five people with AIDS are between 20 and 29 years old (HIV/AIDS Surveillance, October 1991), the primary ages of our undergraduate and graduate students. The number of young people contracting the disease is doubling every 14 months. Regardless of students' current or future HIV status, however, the probability is high that the many ramifications of AIDS will accompany them throughout their lives. In order to function effectively in the 21st century, they will have to know a great deal more about this subject than just its medical dimension. For these reasons, it is paramount that the AIDS crisis be examined within the context of the political science curriculum. The following course outline is presented with this in mind. Overview of Course