Donald Grasse

Donald Grasse

Visiting Assistant Professor | Government | International Relations | Cornell University

Teaching

Advanced Regression Analysis

Graduate course, Cornell University, Government, 2025

Regression is perhaps the most ubiquitous tool for quantitative analysis in the social sciences. Why? What can it be used for, how can we interpret results, when do its assumptions fail, and what can analysts do if the core assumptions no longer hold? This course will answer all of these questions by providing building blocks for causal modeling (potential outcomes and structural causal models), the multiple motivations of linear regression (plug-in estimator, geometric, linear algebra, FWL), modifications required for limited dependent variables (logistic regression), how it operates in the presence of covariates (moderation, mediation), examine its various use cases for drawing inferences from data (selection on observables, instrumental variables, panel data and differencing, regression discontinuity) while providing students with practical lessons on statistical programming.

Controversies in Security Studies

Undergraduate course, Cornell University, Government, 2025

Does nuclear proliferation create stability or the potential for security crisis? Do international institutions constrain aggressive actors? Can international courts hold human rights abusers accountable? This course covers crucial debates in the field of security studies. Each week, we will review both sides of a claim with mixed theoretical and empirical evidence and review the evidence and arguments for either side. Throughout the class, students will learn the substance of these debates, along with processes for evaluating arguments, interpreting data and evidence, and argumentitive writing.

Climate Change and International Security

Undergraduate Seminar, Cornell University, Government, 2024

This course concerns the interrelationship between climate change and violent conflict across the globe. In the class, we explore both how climate change threatens to intensify violent conflict, and how armed conflict feeds back into environmental damage. Further, we discuss solutions to the problem, and make abstract theories concrete by discussing policy approaches to mitigation and adapation as it relates to environmental security.

Political Science 120: Introduction to Comparative Politics

Undergraduate course, Emory University, Political Science, 2020

Course Descrpition: This course offers an introduction to the comparative study of modern political systems. It outlines a number of the major theories of comparative political analysis and applies to them to a selection of democratic, authoritarian, and hybrid systems. It examines how these systems function internally and how they interact with their societies, economies, and international environments, as well as how they change over time and how they undergo transitions from one tyepe to another.