It was a good class if you're interested in Global Studies, but it was the first time taught when I took it, so it was a little disorganized and difficult to tell what readings to do because the syllabus was reordered during the semester and never reuploaded or edited. Content was interesting and you get to learn a lot about both security and development, so I think the course is helpful for both GSSJ and GDS tracks. Economic background is recommended but not required, because Safdar explains a lot of the economic intuition and it's relatively basic in the course itself. The best portion was group discussion on cases for certain countries, mostly because we often got ones that aren't often talked about (like India, China, U.S.. etc.) so we got to learn more about a different part of the world. Grading was sort of random; we had a midterm essay, a short answer final exam and a few random discussion presentations throughout the semester. Still was a relatively easy course though.