i went to class on the first day, second day, day of the midterm, and day of the final. completely useless to go to class really. his lectures are sooo boring and his slides are extremely unhelpful. its just two take home essays for the midterm and the final and the topics are easily research-able. if you do your research for a few days before the essays are due and write them with any fluidity then you shouldn't get anything less than a B. keep in mind its only 2 essays each 6-8 pages for the entire quarter 50% each. so focus for a few days before each is due and make them count. otherwise, enjoy your time off while you're NOT attending his class!!! go work out at wooden or something. or start your drinking earlier! or go see a significant other! or hang out with your friends instead! you can even go to class and just play games or scope classmates out because in the long run, that is definitely more useful than listening to hager talk and talk and talk. it was a class supposedly about afghanistan and the middle east but we talked about the cold war till week 8. take him though. easy if you go about it right.

I went to class five times the entire quarter: the first day, the midterm review, to turn in my midterm paper, the final review and to turn in my final paper. I still got an A after writing both papers (6-8 pages) in 6 hours each. All you need to do to get an A is read the sections that are important to your paper topic and follow the essay format Hager recommends. The readings he assigns are fairly interesting too. Easy. Take Hager; I plan on taking him again in the future.

I think the reviews on this website are pretty accurate. He's not the greatest PERSON to approach or talk to, but he definitely knows his stuff. If you care to attend lecture (which, I'm sure he doesn't care if you do or not), you will learn a lot from him. However, attending lecture is not necessary to do well in the class. But, don't be fooled by the ratings, a lot of students don't do well because they don't take the course serious. It's not the hardest class, but it depends on the TA who grades your essays. Take it with caution, but, like any other class, you get what you put into it.

The class was called "Foreign Relations After 9/11" - even his syllabus claimed that the class looks at "American foreign relations with several regions of the world since the 9/11 attacks", but we did absolutely no such thing. The majority of the class was spent on past wars (WWII, Cold War), only one lecture was spent on al Quaeda and the Taliban, and we ended the course with a discussion of Russia/Iran/Chinese relations and a historical look on Korea (including the Korean War). My point: he did NOT stick to what the class was supposed to be about.

As far as lecture goes, overall it was boring and dry, and if you really paid attention, you'd find that he talks all over the place and that it's kind of difficult to keep up even with a laptop. His only response to all questions in office hours was to "go do the reading". I will give him one thing, he does know history and foreign relations in other regions of the world...just nothing much on what this class was supposed to be about.