This course will explore the forces that led to the 9/11 attacks and the policies the United States adopted in response. We will examine the phenomenon of modern terrorism, the development of the al Qai'da ideology, and the process by which individuals radicalize towards violence.
How to Write a Policy Memo - Overview
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Del curso dictado por Duke University
Understanding 9/11: Why 9/11 Happened & How Terrorism Affects Our World Today
25 calificaciones
Duke University
25 calificaciones
De la lección
Week 2: What is Terrorism?
Our topic for this week is, what is terrorism. We will try to define terrorism and understand the actions that we're going to be studying in this course, 9/11 and its aftermath. We will examine one of the key debates in this area; can terrorism be executed by a state, or is it only the use of political violence by a non-state actor. You will also learn how to write a policy memo.
Conoce a los instructores
David SchanzerAssociate Professor of the Practice
Sanford School of Public Policy
One of the key goals of this course is to teach you not only about the content of
terrorism and 9/11 and things about Al-Qaeda, but also
try to build some skills and teach you how to communicate both orally and in writing.
And so, I thought I'd spend some time talking about how to write a policy memo.
Which will hopefully, help you with the assignments in this course, but
also maybe teach you lessons about writing that you can take with you and
apply to other areas.
The other point I just want to make at the outset is sure, I'm trying to teach
you how to write a specific type of policy memo, but these things I'm going to
talk about in this video really translate to all different styles of writing.
And you can write this kind of format of memo not just for
if you're in the government or for public policy, but for
any kinds of occupations where you're trying to frame an issue for a decision.
And that could be in business, it could be virtually in any field.
So, what are the key aspects of particular this policy memo?
A memo that tries to frame a decision.
First of all, you're focusing on answering one single question and
putting it in a context where the rear is trying to be informed.
So they can ultimately, make a very informed and wise decision.
They need to be short and concise.
The reason for this is the types of people that make decisions are very busy.
They do not want to do their own research.
They do not want to read a 30-page wandering analysis.
They want to know the key facts and they want to know the pros and cons of
different approaches, and they want to know what you've recommended that did.
You want to make sure it's providing the decision maker with all that's relevant,
but no more.
They don't want to read extraneous material even if it's interesting.
So you're not trying to entertain the reader, but
inform them, so they could a decision.
And finally, when I say frame, you want to the issue for a decision.
So they understand what the various options are and understand why you've
rejected some of the analysis of the pros, and cons of various approaches.
Ultimately, they may not decide the same way you do, but
you want to provide them enough information, so
they can properly evaluate the various options that are on the table.
And of course, they are interested ultimately in your recommendation,
because you've become the expert in writing this memo.
You have done some analysis and
they may very well take into account what your ultimate conclusion is.
Couple parts of a policy memo.
I think I'd like to see my papers organized for this course in this fashion.
First, an introduction.
[COUGH] It's going to explain the purpose in the memo.
Also, summarizes conclusion and reasoning.
We're talking not even about a paragraph,
we want this memo to be a total of 750 words, no more.
So you only have two or three sentences at the beginning to do this, but it's very
important that you say almost everything that you need to in this introduction.
Because it is possible that,
that's the only thing that this decision maker's going to read.
So, you want to have a very concise summary at the beginning in case they
don't get to anything else.
Second, background and background is going to be the straight factual material.
You're not making arguments here yet, you can certainly shade the facts.
Tone your factual presentation to lead in to the argument and
conclusions you're ultimately going to reach, but
this should be totally laying out the facts in fairly neutral fashion.
The analysis is where you're making your argument.
You're trying to persuade the reader that your decision is the proper one.
However, you do want to show that you've considered other options and
explain why you've rejected them and then your conclusion should be a very concise
statement of your recommended course of action.
So for this course, I'd like to see these four pieces of a policy memo and you can
use subheadings and things like that to clearly demarcate what section you're in.
Although on the introduction, you can just start with those two sentences.
You don't need the word introduction.
It's pretty clear when it's right at the beginning, that's what it is.
But I'd like to see subheadings for background, analysis and conclusion.
So for this video, I'm going to do a mock policy memo for you.
The entirety of it will be up on our site that you can read and analyze and
tell me what you think the flaws are, but it's going to be about
policy issues relating to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Type of thing we'll be discussing in the second part of this course,
9/11 and it's aftermath, part two.
So let's assume a scenario where President Obama is having a conversation with,
currently, his National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
And the President says to her in the Oval Office, he said,
I said I was going to close Guantanamo Bay in 2009, but it is still open.
And now, there's a 100 hunger strikers.
What is going on?
How do we fix this problem?
And of course, the Security Advisor's going to say to him,
okay boss, I'll get right on it.
So he's not necessarily expecting the answer right away, but so
she's going to go back, talk to her advisors and they're going to present
a memo for the president about what direction to go on Guantanamo.
So this is our task, this is our framing of the issue.
So, let's talk a little bit about the process you're going to go through to
write this memo.
First phase is a thinking phase and thinking might involve research,
gathering facts, but the most important thing to do is think through the elements
of the problem, what the options are?
What you think is the best course of action?
What are the facts that are relevant to this and
how do you substantiate your facts?
What are the key sources?
And you're doing all of this thinking maybe in groups, maybe individually.
And you should be spending, probably much more time in the thinking phase
than ultimately in the writing phase.
One big problem writers have is that you've got a due date coming up,
you've got a deadline, the pressure's on to get something done.
The first thing you do, you turn on your computer, you want to start writing.
You want to start showing that you're having progress,
that often leads to sloppy thinking.
It leads to drafts that are unorganized and end up needing to be totally redone.
So, you can waste a great deal of time by not investing the time upfront but
to do the thinking.
Now it's important that you then express, organize your thinking into an outline.
It doesn't have to be with a lot of content, but
it's going to show the order of your memo.
You're going to show the basic sections.
Within the sections, you're going to want to outline and
tell here's what all the different paragraphs are going to say.
Here's the order I'm going to present this material in.
Here are the content of the various arguments and
you want to use that outline ultimately during the writing process.
And again, the more time you spend thinking and
the more time you spend outlining,
the easier that somewhat torturous writing process it's going to be.
Writing, so you're going to sit down and you're actually going to have to write it.
You've got your outline and the key thing is to just write and keep going.
Get something down on paper.
You'll have time to examine it later, but
don't worry about each word being perfectly polished about
each sentence being just the way you're going to want at the end.
Because no matter how good a job you do on that first draft,
things are going to change.
You might even end up throwing out paragraphs.
So, why obsess and spend extra hours fine tuning each paragraph
at this initial stage when you might end up jettisoning some of these materials?
So, get a good solid draft down on paper.
That's your core goal, but next is the revision process.
Besides thinking, revision is where all the big work is being done.
So, you're going to hone down your arguments.
You're going to make sure everything's in logical sense.
You're going to look at things and
you're going to revise from a number different levels.
You're going to revise at the paragraph level, making sure all your paragraphs
are in the right work, in a good organized fashion, a flow one to the other.
You're going to go at the sentence level, making sure each sentence is smooth and
as short as can be.
And you're going to go down to the word to word level of trying to make
your grammar and diction is correct, that your word usage,
that you cut as many words out, your verbosity, the weed all of that out.
So, you're going to try to revise at all of these different levels.
You're going to go through this document, one, two, maybe three times.
Once you've got your paragraphs, so you're happy with them,
then you start working on your sentences.
Once the sentences, then you go down to the microlevel word to word,
even down to the individual comma.
Finally, important part that a lot of people forget, ignore,
they discard it for exhaustion proofreading.
You've got to proofread.
Short memos, especially, 750 words, the goal is perfection.
Sometimes it's not attainable, but you should strive for
perfection on anything that you write, a zero mistakes.
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