Biopolitics should be offered as a separate, independent course in the undergraduate curriculum, and graduate training should be offered within the rubric of political science. The primary reason that biopolitical materials should be covered in the undergraduate, liberal arts curriculum is that there is a need to train students to be vigilant, i.e., to have a critical capacity to confront ideas. Since so much of their lives will be intertwined with the political and so much of the political is better explained by considering biopolitical variables than by not considering them, students need exposure and academic coverage of biopolitical concepts and findings. Biopolitics represents only minor change in the general behavioralistic framework of explaining political phenomena, but represents the introduction into political science of some concepts and variables more widely used in the life sciences. Because biopolitical materials are high in quantity and because they are per se important and increase the explanatory power of traditional behavioralism, a biopolitics course belongs in the political science curriculum. The preparation of qualified teachers and researchers argues for graduate training in biopolitics. Without such graduate training in political science departments, the biopolitical inquiry will primarily be undertaken in disciplines other than political science.

Biopolitics must be taught in a context that makes it possible for students to acquire competence in at least evolutionary biology, genetics (with the proper molecular biology perspective), biological anthropology, neurobiology, and the evolution of behavior. A more modest beginning may be necessary, however, and actually has been pursued at various institutions.

Although a systematic study of experiences in teaching biopolitics has not been prepared, various impressions have been obtained. In spite of some seemingly discouraging situations with respect to biopolitics, expectations that a biobehavioral perspective ultimately will be the principal and pervasive frame of reference for a proper study of political processes and institutions are justified.

In recent years many scholars in political science have begun to employ the data of the life sciences in their studies. The emerging field of biopolitics is now an identifiable scholarly pursuit. The question now arises as to how that pursuit can and should be taught.

This article describes several courses which I have offered in the past few years in which I have attempted to integrate political philosophy and biopolitics. Course content, along with student and peer reaction are discussed, as are the advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary collaboration. This approach is rejected in favor of a design which would begin with a departmental core of courses which would then provide a base for inter-institutional collaboration among students and faculty.

Biopolitics can be taught as a curriculum, a “free standing course,” or as a component of mainstream political science courses. This essay contends that the free standing course is the most difficult of the three to do well. The problem lies in how to organize such a course. To introduce students to (a) biology, (b) politics, and (c) the union of the two, is asking a great deal of one course.

Curriculum change in colleges and universities depends in some situations on issues other than the substance or content of the proposed changes.

If introduction of courses such as those which incorporate the literature of biopolitics take the interdisciplinary form, the innovator must develop appropriate political strategies and tactics. The particular politics so developed must identify critical environmental constraints, including departmental jurisdiction, the prevailing reward structure within the institution, and relative importance of the formal and informal governance procedures.

Most critical in certain relatively small and not particularly “bureaucratized” institutions are the attitude of the institution's president toward academic innovation and the degree of threat posed by the new course to the traditional turf of relevant departments. If presidential and vice presidential support for academic innovation are widely perceived and if departmental concerns are satisfied, much latitude for the persistent academic politician exists.

It is entirely possible that a politics which understands and accepts the institution's formal and informal governance procedures is more critical than the content of proposed courses even when the course content is biopolitics.

Teaching about the biological perspective on human behavior offers numerous benefits to the instructor. Students, however, are often plagued by numerous common misconceptions concerning genetic influences on behavior, political implications of sociobiology, and evolved sex differences. These are discussed in that order. Lastly, some books are recommended as texts and references.

This article pursues two goals. It sets forth a framework for incorporating life sciences materials into introductory or advanced courses in international relations. It also presents a format for processing these materials in the classroom. In pursuit of these aims, the article addresses problems commonly encountered when initially undertaking a more balanced biopolitical approach to international relations, and sets forth proposals designed to treat these problems.

By combining one-half of a regular genetics course with a special half describing the use of genetics in legal decisions, a new course, “Genetics and the Law,” has been offered at Union College for the past few years. The course stresses the interface between strictly genetic discoveries and their use in all fields of law as a basis for judicial actions. The course, open to all except biology majors and premedical or predental students, serves as part of Union College's “Liberal Learning Program,” and as one of the two courses, among many, serving as science credits needed for graduation. The special conditions under which this course is possible, as well as the methods of teaching and the problems encountered both in attracting students and in designing a comparable course are presented.

This article considers the ways in which teachers of public administration can address biopolitical issues within an established professional curriculum. The author distinguishes between the teleological and instrumental aspects of a belief system, holding that biobehavioral explanation can be pedagogically useful and can provide public administrators with a model for assessing and responding to workplace phenomena. The article proposes that undergraduate and graduate teaching impose different standards on an instructor seeking to introduce biobehavioral and biostructural concepts. The different standards arise out of the explicit and focused career instrumentality of graduate study in public administration, as well as age graded differences in receptivity to particular propositions about human nature. Finally, this article details some ways in which biobehavioral explanation can be introduced in organizational behavior classes and in classes that consider the structure of public organizations and their decision-making processes.

Biomedical choices are emerging as critical policy issues of the 1980s. Political pressures for cost containment, trends toward corporate medicine, and continuing problems of access and equity ensure biomedical issues a prominent place on the policy agenda. Students of political science should be familiar with the array of biomedical technologies that currently are challenging the tenets of medicine as well as the capacity of political institutions to resolve the resulting policy dilemmas. Based on this, a course in biomedical policy is overdue. This article outlines a course which is designed to clarify the public policy dimensions of biomedicine and develop analytical skills in the students so that they can better cope with these issues of public and personal importance. It describes some of the approaches and methods that I have found useful and summarizes a few of the problems one might expect to encounter in teaching biomedical policy.

This article is divided into three parts: “Faculty Preparation: Immersion in the Literature,” “Conceptualizing and Organizing the Course,” and “Course Design.” The first part is addressed particularly to readers without access to a computer search of the literature. It suggests resource materials for each of the technologies. It also speaks to the meanings of and approaches which may be used to study biopolitics. Biopolicy is the approach used in the course.

The second part addresses the problem of finding a unifying concept which would bring cohesion to the multiple and diverse materials and issues. It also includes the statement of purpose and course objectives. It is here that the development of identifying and demonstrating the nexus between the reproductive technologies and public policy begins. It also discusses methodologies used in the course.

The third part lists the activities that served as a guide in designing the course and cites remaining caveats in course development. The paper concludes with statements about required reading materials, review materials, audio-visual aids, and a broad outline of the course.

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between “town” pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as “biocultural beings,” as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.

Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.

The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.

Nurses, as other life science students, have been prejudiced against politics, imagining that it only contaminates techno-scientific enterprises. However, the new, professional nurse is aware of the need for political understanding and political skills. The transformation of the socio-economic status of the health care industry from a social service to a business provides an excellent opportunity for introducing the nursing student to political thought in a positive conjunction with practical analysis.

To generate a credible metapolitical framework, I embrace rather than avoid the current problems about the nature of the subject matter of politics. An aggressive, philosophically informed attack on the myth of autonomous, objective science opens the student's intellectual map of reality, and lays the groundwork for a proposed (paradoxical) complementarity of the two traditional models: politics as a science and politics as a humanity. This uncomfortable, middle ground position, abandoning any global Rationalism, again makes historical and contemporary case studies a relevant—in fact essential—part of political education. This is an effective approach to introducing the nursing student, whose education is dominated by classical, rationalistic, scientific images, to political studies.

Due to the prevailing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities and due to some traditional reservations against biology in Germany, biopolitics is facing particular difficulties in German political science. At the University of Düsseldorf, the only place where biopolitics is taught in Germany, students take courses which deal explicitly with biopolitical topics or learn about biopolitics in seminars and lectures devoted to other aspects of political behavior. There are difficulties in teaching biopolitics; some will arise wherever biopolitics is taught, while some may be specific for Germany. These difficulties require special teching efforts in order to motivate the students; some experience in dealing with these problems has already been gained. As far as the desirable participation in research projects and the practical application of biopolitical knowledge in particular professions is concerned, there are some possibilities, but still too few. Besides working with students on biopolitical questions, there are useful opportunities of teaching biopolitics outside the university, especially in adult political education and in political consulting.

The article describes a course entitled “Biosocial Approaches to Political Theory,” which is currently being taught at Griffith University. Course orientation, pedagogy, assessment strategy, teaching aids, and course bibliography are described. The humanities milieu of the course produced collegial friction whose management by the instructor is discussed. The legitimacy dispute arising from the friction led to a public controversy in the national media. The politics of that dispute are analyzed.

There are several noteworthy aspects to 1985. First, the triennial congress of the International Political Science Association was held (in Paris). Second, full panels on biology and politics were featured at four regularly scheduled political science meetings—the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the New York State Political Science Association—an increase from just two the year before. Third, three dissertations are either completed or in progress: a decided improvement after such little activity in that area in 1984. Fourth, over 10 percent of the works appearing were by non-United States political scientists, reflecting a continuation of their greater visibility over the past few years. Fifth, several works were produced by two different teams of researchers that have received substantial support from federal research grants (Masters and colleagues; J. Schubert, Wiegele, and Hines). Finally, there is a continuing influx of new entrants into the ranks of biopolitical scholars (we tally 25 for the year).