The Political-Economy of Agricultural Labor in the Trump Era will sharply focus on the Salinas Valley’s agricultural economy and pose the question: What might we do – inside agricultural firms, with public policy, in the nonprofit sector – to ensure dignified work and livelihoods, secure access to health, education and human services, physical security, and respect for the Valley’s agricultural labor pool. The course is decidedly analytical: students will learn and/or relearn analytical techniques in high demand in the job market, across a wide variety of job categories. The following analytical techniques will be taught: cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, multi-criteria analysis, sensitivity analysis, complex systems analysis, descriptive modeling, and prescriptive modeling. We will also have a “sandbox” during the course around emerging techniques for deploying “big data” in policy and socio-economic improvement efforts. The course will push students to think critically about tradeoffs between economic efficiency/rationality and rights, between short and long-term horizons, between public vs. private responsibilities, between local, state, and national legal regimes. In the end, student teams will recommend – and present to a critical panel of judges from the Salinas Valley – a set of concrete policy/practice proposals rooted in rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysis that would help make the Salinas Valley the go-to place for farm families to work.