Robert Amdur

AMAZING seminar! Interesting court cases, brought in a guest lecturer, which added more to the discussion. HW Readings ranged from 30-60 pages per week (which is a much lighter workload than any other poli sci seminar). Participation is mainly attendance, but you are most likely going to want to discuss since the topics are engaging. I truly enjoyed all the discussions, and he is an extremely sharp and intelligent professor. I would definitely recommend taking him!

Amdur is wonderful. He is one of those professors without a huge ego to protect or a potential hotshot academic career to shuttle along, and it shows in his classes: he focuses on teaching and enjoys his students. He is perhaps the clearest lecturer I've encountered, and he speaks at a manageable pace so that you can easily take down all the important points. He always leaves time at the end for questions, and genuinely welcomes them; it made me sad to see how disappointed he was on those days where there were none! He makes difficult texts seem easy. I truly hope that I will be able to take another class with him in my time left here. A shy but extensively kind man.

Anyone who teaches a course called "Human Rights and Social Justice" has to be a nice guy and the same holds true with Prof. Amdur. He's a great teacher who is very approachable and concerned about his students. The readings are a little dry but Amdur's methodological approach and willingness to repeat explanations ultimately made the texts easily digestible. In fact, I really looked forward to going to class because of AmdurÂ’s ingenious capability to elucidate esoteric theory. I am so happy I took this course, which really broadened by mind, and had Amdur as my professor. True, he's not particularly charismatic but he is incredibly organized and deeply respects his students. I unequivocally recommend this course to anyone even remotely interested in social justice theory.

I loved this class--it was great, and Amdur is great. He's a theorist, so all of your discussions go back to the theory we read int he first couple weeks. He's very methodical, and spends time at the beginning of each class reviewing the previous week (though I sort of wish he didn't). The conversations we had in class were great, provacative and fun. The paper was hard, but you really learn a lot about one area of law.

i'm sure he's smart. I'm sure he's bias. I'm sure his perspective borders on religious favoring. This class could have been good, but everything you say.. he says, "so let me see if I understand what you are saying... what you are sayhing is.." and he normally is wrong in his understandiungs, thus, he puts words in people's mouths.. BUT you can't correct him because his speaking is sooooo slow and methodical that to interrupt it is impossible and he doesn't like that. HE is not the guy to be teaching a class on DEMOCRACY nor ETHICS. He is not particularly fair. He favors students and seems to hold narrow views on interpretation of text and analysis. So, yes, there are wrong answers and wrong opinions... and he will pretty much disgard your ideas.. rather than even bother to refute them. he's smart, no doubt, i'm sure. But he is not a mediator, nor an unbiased party in colloquia "discussions". he holds the gavel.. don't even expect a chance to argue that...

Professor Amdur is an outstanding professor and a decent man. I always looked forward to class, if for no other reason than to listen to him speak so eloquently about the cases that we studied. I can see how some might find his lectures a little dry, although the issues are so interesting and he is so knowledgeable that I always felt fully engaged. As the semester went along, I began to appreciate that he is someone with great legal instincts and moral clarity, always providing reasonable and well thought-out takes. I found myself wanting to hear more of his opinions on hot-button issues because I really do trust his judgment. I'm really glad I took this class (especially second semester senior year) because of how relevant and stimulating the topics were. Honestly, a really impactful course for me and a great one to wrap up my time at Columbia.

Amdur isn't the most scintillating lecturer, which turns off many students, but I found that listening to them gave me a strong understanding of the argument of all the authors we studied. He speaks at a very manageable pace, and chooses his facts judiciously--he's not trying to show you how much he knows, or cram in every fact he's ever learned about Plato. In general, I appreciated this class a lot.

The most refreshingly logical lecturer at Columbia, Professor Amdur's class is designed to help you not to talk to at you or over your head. He assigns a section of a book and then lectures on that book's main points from an outline. He gives you what you need, explains some of the more complicated points, and cuts out the crap. Wonderful. But don't hink that he's dumbing anything down, the readings are difficult and the material is abstract, so it pays to have a prof so concerned with actually teaching. He spends thae first 15 minutes reviewing the last class (again from his outline), and then moves on for another 45 minutes. There was always time for decent discussion in the last 15 minutes. My one reservation is that this is an extremely liberal course. If you don't believe that human rights exist or don't believe that discussing them is worth while, then you're going to be slightly uncomfortable reading about why you need to sell your belongings to feed the Nambians. As a conservative, I was dissapointed that the course did not inclue utilitarian discussions of human rights or any sort of neocon perspective on why rights are important, but I'm pretty used to that at this school by now. All and all, a wonderful course.

cases every week (maybe an hour of reading at most), and a 25 page paper on something having to do with the first amendment.

good.. read and discuss... but 1/2 discussion is him re"iterating" what he "understands" you to have said.. so you don't get so deep into concepts as you may like