Tuesday Afternoon Linkage Club

by PM

26 March 2013, 1432 EDT

cute-duck
A very restricted number of links today:

  • Jennifer Victor lays out the strategy for an effective lobbying effort for political science. [The Mischiefs of Faction]
  • Phil Schrodt delivers a sensible assessment of the state of play, including a warning about vitriol and a savage critique of the APSA. My thoughts are mixed: Vitriol is probably counterproductive, but some form of targeted shaming is probably justified—a vote against NSF independence is a vote against knowledge—but Schrodt is definitely right that the NSF won’t play games with projects if Congress gives it clear instructions. So, sorry, critical theorists, you probably won’t be able to justify your work as having national-security implications in the way that Congress intends any time soon. More inside baseball: this might be a boon for traditional security studies—I mean “guns and bombs” traditional, not necessarily qually—and it also means something for the discipline that the two biggest government sources of funding now basically require a national-security rationale for what we do. Are there any language/area experts who can tell us more about what happens to your field when the government only takes an interest in it for security reasons?


And, just to guarantee Congress cuts all funding for political science forever:

  • The CP-USA has lesson plans, which certainly is one form of online education that I had not expected to arise.