Professor Johns makes international law (a topic that could otherwise be sort of boring/irrelevant) pretty interesting- her lectures are engaging and extremely well organized. There are weekly quizzes in section that are super easy, just set aside 20 minutes or so to read the cases and you'll be fine as the questions are simple fact based questions. Her midterm was a bit harder than I expected actually, but she does curve it generously and I really should have just studied more. The tests are worth most of your grade (70%) however given COVID-19 our final was changed into a set of essay questions that were take-home. The take-home final took a significant amount of time and although I respected her as being fair during the rest of the time I took the class I think she could have been a little more understanding.

I started off truly enjoying this class and found most of our weekly case studies interesting. The class is based off of Prof. Johns textbook, and her midterm and final were difficult.

While the content was interesting, Prof. Johns herself is a different story. After a lecture on international law and war crimes, I approached Prof. Johns after class and said that I had a question regarding how international law applied to Palestine and the illegal settlements. She proceeded to say "I won't discuss Palestine." I was not interested in discussing politics or individual beliefs. I was simply interested in understanding the legal framework of an international issue, one that clearly falls in the purview of the title of her class: International Law.

How is a Professor of International Law at UCLA refusing to speak about an issue at the forefront of understanding the application of IL? I lost immense respect for her, but continued to remain engaged in class. A week later during lecture she made blatant Islamophobic comments in front of everyone, which she then was forced to apologize for the next class. It was frankly embarrassing. This theme continued, with her entertaining a conversation about the Uyghur Genocide in which a student stated most Muslims are terrorists. This class had so much potential, and it's unfortunate that Prof. Johns allowed her Islamophobic biases and her personal political beliefs to get in the way of her teaching.

I did well in this class; largely because the TA I had was fantastic. This professor is very classless, and went out of her way to post a public statement praising the brutalization of her own students for peacefully protesting. Out of principle, avoid this woman, she believes that those who disagree with her deserve to be shot with rubber bullets! Professor Johns, if you ever see this, I hope you reconsider your views and come to be ashamed of your behavior during this time.