Far and away one of the best classes I've taken in the department. Posner is a fantastic lecturer, and I walked away having learned a great deal.

Exams are term IDs and essays - not difficult if you go to class and study well.

Not sure why Posner doesn't have higher ratings, he's an excellent professor! He's helpful, understanding, and engaging. Super reasonable midterm and final and overall a great class to take. My TA was Maxim and he was really helpful too!

Professor Posner is severely underrate on Bruin Walk. He is probably the best political science professor I have had at UCLA. I took classes with him twice (Polisci 50 and Polisci 151A). He is probably one of the most knowledgeable, organized, clear, understandable and fair professors at UCLA. In fact, he is one of the most famous scholars in the study of African politics.

However, you need to give 100% focus in his class, since he is not the type of professor that puts notes on his lecture slides. His presentation consists mostly of pictures and statistics, but he gives a very organized lecture, which make it very easy to follow.

His exams are also extremely fair, which consist of terms that he gave in advance to study for. I highly recommend any political science student to take this class. To be honest I didn't have much interest in this class in the beginning, but now I am very knowledgeable in this topic.

Prof Posner is seriously one of the better professors at UCLA and one who truly cares about the information he teaches. He is very charismatic and his lectures are extremely organized. I took this class with Michael Ross' M167c and man was that helpful as many of the readings and information overlapped.

I got an A in this course without doing a single reading from the phonebook that is the course reader (what a waste of money). However, I did read the novel for which you must write a 10-12 page paper. If you attend lecture (and you must attend lecture and take excellent notes...BRING A COMPUTER!) then the paper will be a piece of cake since the novel relates heavily to many of the themes in the class. I easily got an A on it. Furthermore, the map quiz at the beginning of the year is a grade booster. If you screw that up its on you. I found that websites like Sporcle were clutch in helping me memorize the countries.

In conclusion, this is one of the better or more informative classes you will ever take at UCLA. I knew nothing about Africa prior to this class and now have a wealth of knowledge that is not going away soon. That's because the way that Posner teaches his material somehow makes it stick. Bring a computer to take notes, attend all the lectures, and if you can team up with a group of people and create a Google Doc to knock out the massive amount of terms needed for the midterm and final. TAKE POSNER AND TAKE THIS CLASS!

Posner is one of the harder professors I had at UCLA. I got a high B on the midterm, A on the paper, and an A in the class. I will write what you need to do to do well in the class.

Test format- for the midterm, you write 2 essay out of 3 and 5 id's out of 7 (you are given a list of over 40 which is a bit to much in my view). The essay material TAKE FROM THE NOTES and the id's take from the notes while most of them will be from the reading. Basically the id's portion is the only thing you need from the reading.

You HAVE TO GO TO CLASS AND TAKE VERY GOOD NOTES!!! If you don't like going to class, this class isn't for you because over half of the midterm and final is based on the notes.

The paper- he gives you a 10-12 page paper to write which is pretty easy but make sure to CITE where you get your theories from (you will be deducted points from it). In addition, read the books and don't get summaries because he is not dumb and people did that in our class and he caught them.

Final- study in the same fashion.

Warning: Alot of reading and alot of notes (about 100 pages of typed notes by the end of the quarter).
Good luck!