Synergy Across the Curriculum: Simulating the Institution of Postwar Iraqi Government

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article describes an undergraduate simulation that formulates Iraqi regimes following the removal of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. This exercise reinforces student comprehension and awareness for a range of legal and political topics—including group decision making, international law, diplomacy, and human rights—by actively engaging the students in policy formulation and group to group negotiations. In addition to presenting individual course concepts, this activity presents the advantages of multidisciplinary approaches by integrating related disciplines at the United States Air Force Academy. Contemporary social problems, foreign or domestic, require multifaceted solutions presented by particular specializations. Concerning the question of postwar Iraqi justice, political science students use their class expertise to design political institutions and legal studies. Students design the main legal apparatus as students from these respective disciplines then join together to execute the simulation. The four key components of active learning approaches—educational objectives, design parameters, procedures, and assessment and debriefing—are employed providing a full understanding of the goals, set-up, process, and advantages to synergizing across the curriculum for the issue of post-war Iraqi justice. The simulation has been successfully implemented three times with United States Air Force Academy cadets with feedback indicating positive results and providing inputs that modified the initial construct of the simulation.