Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am writing to appeal the decision for my book review Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa: The Tragedy of Endowment. Professor Andrews is a great professor who is passionate about the subject, but I do not feel that he is as accommodating to his students. He provided very strong compliments for my writing, so I was confused why my mark was so low. When I met with him, he explained that he never grades an assignment above an 86 because this of how this is an Arts class, and that I was missing an introductory sentence to my book review. I think that this 86 threshold is a very arbitrary cutoff that can be detrimental to my future when I continue studies, especially since I am planning on getting an MBA, such schools do not understand the subjectivity and arbitrary cutoffs that are placed in Arts programs. This is a different criteria from Political Studies masters programs and I am also upset that many professors assume that I will be continuing my studies in political studies. I am not, and so professors should really try to grade as objectively as possible and not grade based on the arbitrary standards they set in Arts programs.

I am asking that this book review be regraded based on the OBJECTIVE criteria that the professor has set in the syllabus. He asks that the book review provide a careful evaluation of the CONTENT in the book, the MAIN ARGUMENT, and a BRIEF REFLECTION OF HOW THE BOOK FITS INTH THE BROADER TOPIC OF IPE OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN AFRICA, A GENERAL INTRODUCTION, and an ARGUMENT FROM THE STUDENT (which is when I provide by thesis statement). I am asking that my book review be graded based these points, and I think that my book review has met all of these points, and have even gone beyond expectations in the criteria for CONTENT and CRITERIA.

Reflection:

I have situated and analyzed the main points of the book using the course concepts found in IPE, specifically agency and structure, and the debate of the resource curse, and I have been able to do this within the four page limit. I also provided a quote from Robert Cox to strengthen my analysis, because he is a prominent scholar in British IPE.

Content:

I read the entire 200 page book, and picked out the key debate in Alao's book (that weak governing structures are the cause of natural resource conflict, rather than the presence of natural resources itself) as well as his 3 arguments for it. I provided examples that Alao gives specifically in the book (to strengthen my summary and provide substance to the fact that I read the entire book, such as the example of Nigeria given in page 1 and the example of Liberia under President Doe on page 2), and I have also provided Alao's arguments for the resources that are prone to the resource curse, which are land, minerals, oil and water(pg 3) (as well as provided a my personal assessment on pg 3 of how Alao's writing diverges from the current material on the resource curse, because he also looks at land and water, which is atypical of the literature on this debate).

I think that since I have been able to provide a strong analysis as well as a full-circle summary of the entire book, more weight should be given on the substance of my writing, rather than the fact that my paper started off a little abruptly (by providing a longer introduction, this would have taken away from the depth of my paper and made it longer than four pages). Furthermore, Professor Andrews also says that I did not provide enough direct quotes, but I have provided two direct quotes from the book, as well as specific direct examples from the book, and I think that these should suffice for a four page essay. I also provided a direct quote from Robert Cox to strengthen my argument.

I will include 1) the notes from the readings we did that I used in my book review 2) my book review 3) the criteria for the book review in the syllabus 4) and his comments on my paper. I was going to include the PDF of Alao's book, but it exceeds the maximum 5MB file.