Peter T. Kahn
assistant professor, emeritus

Peter Kahn teaches courses in law and government. His J.D. degree is from the University of Minnesota Law School.

Educational philosophy

Primary goal: promote a positive, supportive classroom atmosphere to stimulate enthusiasm for learning about the philosophical foundations and organizational structure of America's legal system and the American system of government and the political process.

Teaching strategies:

• Encourage mutually respectful, open-minded exchange of differing viewpoints, opinions and perspectives between students and the instructor.
• Reinforce application of substantive course material to individual, personal life experiences.
• Facilitate active student participation through a variety of group oriented and individually focused learning activities.
• Acknowledge and accommodate differences in learning styles through varied instructional approaches (class discussion, guest speakers, lecture, videos, site visits) and a mix of group based/individually focused learning activities and performance measures (quizzes, lesson assignments, projects, exams and papers, weighted 20%, 10%, 15%, 45% and 10% of the final course grade respectively).
• Discourage stereotyped, judgmental dismissal, as unworthy and lacking merit, viewpoints and perspectives that are different from one's own.
• Develop student confidence in sharing informed, factually accurate and defensible viewpoints with others who hold different beliefs and outlooks.
• Promote critical self-examination of individual viewpoints and opinions from broad based, interdisciplinary, multidimentional perspectives.
• Foster constructive, realistic critical analysis through broad examination of course content moving from basic, introductory concepts, terms and constructs to more sophisticated levels of understanding that focus on the interrelatedness of substantive course material to other areas of academic inquiry, noting significant similarities and differences.

Area of research focus

Examining how learning about America's legal system, form of government and the political process affects student attitudes towards these social institutions.