Introduction to PO4018 - International Relations

Lecture One - Introduction to PO four zero one eight. Go to first slide.

Hi class and welcome to PO four zero one eight - International Relations. I'm your lecturer, Scott Fitzsimmons. The first part of this introductory lecture is going to outline the major elements of the module. So, I'll go over the module outline, the module objectives, and other administrative stuff. Then, I'll finish off with a quick overview of the major assignments for the module.

Next slide. Professor Introduction Alright, I guess I'll start off with a bit of info about me:

First off, I grew up in Ottawa, Canada.

I went to Carleton University for a Bachelor's of Public Affairs and Policy Management degree, wherein I specialized in security policy, and followed that up with a Master's of Arts in International Affairs at the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, which is also at Carleton University.

I completed my PhD in two thousand ten in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary, where I specialized in International Relations, Strategic Studies, and Comparative Politics. So, if you want to refer to me as "Doctor Fitzsimmons," you certainly can, but my preference is for you to just call me Scott.

My main areas of expertise include mercenary forces and Private Military Companies, theories of how militaries fight and win wars, and theories of foreign policy decision-making. I have taught and conducted research on these and lots of other topics at the Universities of Calgary, Victoria, British Columbia, and Limerick over the past nineteen years.

I'm also a former civil servant with the Government of Canada. I started my career working as a policy analyst in the Policy Division in the Policy, Planning, and Priorities Directorate, in the Health Policy and Communications Branch of Health Canada. Now, since we didn't have a specific mandate, like, say, the Nursing Division, we pretty much did whatever the Minister of Health was prioritizing at the time.

For most of the time that I was there, my Minister prioritized security and counter-terrorism, so I spent a lot of my time working on Emergency Preparedness policy, which was pretty interesting in the lead up to the War in Iraq when the Government of Canada was trying to decide whether it would join the US-led military coalition.

A little more recently, I worked in the Portfolio Affairs Division in the Strategic Policy Branch of Health Canada, which has been called the "most corrupt agency in Canada."

While there, I mainly helped manage relations between the six departments and agencies that make up the Health Portfolio - which was sometimes a tough job because many of them don't like each other very much.

I also developed several "high-level" policy documents, like strategic plans and the Health Portfolio Strategic Policy Framework. Now, these are documents that are considered ridiculously important and vital to the future of the Health Portfolio, but which no one actually uses or even looks at after they have been written. But, I swear to you that they were damn good. I also, unfortunately, spent nearly eight months helping Health Canada fire a group of volunteers, for reasons that were never made totally clear to me.

And finally, I was asked several years ago by the head of one of Canada's intelligence agencies to become a spy. But, because I really like sleeping in, I opted to become an academic instead.