Great Decisions is a series of eight lectures offered by Acalanes Adult Education (AAE) in conjunction with the Foreign Policy Association (FPA). This course will be less formal than the Great Decisions course offered at AAE, in the past.  Some of the sessions may include guest speakers, but not all.  The Foreign Policy Institute provides a video and multiple articles on the selected topics.  Guests will have the opportunity to lead discussions on one or more of those articles, if they choose.  For each session we will view the 30-minute video on the chosen topic, followed by class discussion.  

The Great Decisions topics for 2025:
American foreign policy at a crossroads
U.S. changing leadership of the world economy
U.S.-China relations
International cooperation on climate change
The future of NATO and European security
AI and American National Security
India: between China, the West, and the Global South
After Gaza: American policy in the Middle East 

LIMITED SPACE

The Great Decisions booklet of reading materials is available for sale by calling 1 (800) 477-5836 or emailing sales@fpa.org.

This course will focus on the history of Ancient Greece, focusing on the Archaic period (800-510 BCE) through the mid-Classic period (510-323 BCE). Through these periods students will explore the birth of Athenian democracy and the growth and development of Athenian culture along with other notable Greek city-states, namely Sparta. The development of the city-state organization of Greece and the complex and ever-changing relations, tensions, and alliances between them all through the ages. The precious influence of Persia in Greek military actions and politics in the early Classical Period will also be investigated, and how the famous Greco-Persian Wars and their aftermath shaped Greece for the rest of the Classical Period. Through this conflict, Greece would briefly unite and then split into two empires of allied city-states led by Athens and Sparta. These two Greek superpowers would shape and define the political landscape of Greece for much of the remainder of the Classical Period. This course will explore the shaping of these empires and how they influenced the early Classic Period of Greece. A deep exploration of both Athenian and Spartan cultures early in the course will assist students in understanding the moral, ethical, and spiritual motivations behind the choices of these city-states, as well as chronicle how they both rose to power throughout the Classic Period.

Students will explore this complex web of cultural exploration, political intrigue, and military actions through a cross-disciplinary method, using archaeology, primary sources, and secondary sources, as well as interactive lessons and multimedia presentations. This method's goal is to not only give students a deep understanding of the historical events and the circumstances and consequences of said events but also how the cultural motivations and changes influenced these events and the people involved in them.  

In this course, students will study and explore Rome's early days before it became the vast empire of the ancient world. Students will explore Rome's mythic and historical origins and how it grew from a small and ambitious Mediterranean territory to a large republic whose territories expanded from all of Italy to Gaul, Spain, and Northern Africa. Through turbulent centuries of warfare, aggressive political expansion, and maneuvering, Rome forged its unique identity as an economic and military-political power in the Mediterranean. As Rome grew in power, it underwent significant socio-economical and military changes and innovations that crystallized the “Roman identity.” Students will learn about the origins and development of Roman socio-political organization and religion and the innovations in military technology and organization that led the Romans to incredible growth in the sixth through first century BCE. This incredible adaptability and political innovation is juxtaposed against a history of constant, intense internal socio-political conflict and civil war. To the observer, this dichotomous nature of Roman power begs the question: how, with such continuous infighting and upheaval, did Rome maintain its place as a political and military superpower in the Mediterranean? This course will explore this question, covering roughly the first half of the Roman Empire's history, its founding and growth into an influential Republic in the Mediterranean, and the birth of Rome as an empire. 

This course will explore Roman history, its growth from a small Italian power into an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to much of Europe and North Africa, and the cultural character of Rome. Religion, political and social organization, economic workings, and urban culture will all be explored to understand the Roman cultural character and how that character was shaped and changed by the circumstances of the time. The time covered in the course will be the founding of Rome in the 8th century BCE, the death of Julius Ceasar, and the crowning of the first emperor, Ceasar Augustus, ending the age of the Roman Republic in 27 BCE. 

The Rise of the West is the second world history course in the sequence following the course about the Classical Civilizations. This course begins with the civilizations of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific Islands on the eve of the discovery of the New World. This discovery and the wealth that was extracted from the Americas completely changed the relationship of Western Europe to the rest of the world. The center of the world economy and civilization moved from the Middle East and the advanced civilizations of India and China to Western Europe. In Europe the center was not the countries on the Mediterranean like Greece and Rome, but those that jutted out into the Atlantic: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and England. Major sources for this course continue with those used in the previous class: Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, Jared Diamonds’ Guns, Germs and Steel, Peter Stearns’ A Brief History of the World, and Michael Woods’ Legacy: The Origins of Civilization.