At the moment many of us are watching the news with bated breath. New sites, facebook and twitter feeds are filling with images of civilian deaths and the leveling of Gaza. There is growing sentiment that the 'targeted' operations in Gaza by the IDF have been...
The London School of Economics Middle Eastern Studies Center recently advertised that it is going to hold a symposium on whether the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine applies to the current...
As of tomorrow I am turning on my "vacation" auto-responder, ceasing blogging for a bit, and hitting the road for some combined business/leisure. Highlights will include: Some Colorado conference...
Germany won the World Cup in soccer, demonstrating to all that its team truly is the best in the world. The German players and coaches were dominant, dispatching a succession of opponents with near...
Just over a week ago – two days before the discovery of the bodies of the three abducted Israeli teenagers and four days before the abduction and revenge killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir -- I sat in the family quarters of a young Palestinian shop owner in Jersusalem’s Old City sipping mint tea with two colleagues. We met the young shop owner and his two cousins while bargaining over some textiles in the Muslim quarter of the Old City. At the conclusion of the sale, they thanked us for a rigorous negotiation and invited us to their family quarters where they had a museum style display of...
Over the July 4th weekend, UT System Chancellor Cigarroa demanded that UT President Bill Powers resign or be fired by July 10th. Bill Powers refused but offered a timetable to step-down. Supporters of the embattled president have launched a petition drive that now has nearly 8500 signatures. At stake is the future of higher education in the state of Texas and whether or not Texas values tier 1 research institutions. There has been a long-running battle in the state of Texas over higher education, with Governor Rick Perry and a number of his allies on the Board of Regents attempting to...
Just in time for you to head to the beach with a copy, my new book is now available from Cornell University Press.* As many of you know, this is the culmination of a my 6-year NSF-funded research project on why some human security problems get on the global agenda and others don't. The answer in a nutshell: it's all about what's going on within the advocacy networks. A teaser of the first chapter is here. A nice write-up by the Chronicle of Higher Education is here. The book includes a longer version of the argument in this article, and three case studies on human security campaigns that...
Our periodic rotation of guest bloggers is underway. This season's newcomers: 1) Jarrod Hayes is Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and is the author of Constructing National Security: US Relations With India and China. You may have seen his IO article on securitization, and his guest posts on nuclear policy, Crimea, the Arab Spring and other topics; and you probably know him as a long-time Duck reader and commenter as well. Jarrod is keen to blog on security, US / Asian foreign policy and climate change in between hiking, kayaking, and working on his house....
The news of unaccompanied children and teens crossing the U.S. southern border circulated about two weeks ago, causing serious concern to many. The Obama administration announced that more family detention centers will be opened to detain the minors. Family detention centers have long been criticized on legal grounds, as Paul W. Schmidt’s excellent review outlines. Law scholar Anil Kalhan identifies, coercion, due processes violations, mandatory custody, and limited counsel as the most critical issues. An Amnesty International report tracing violations of human rights associated with...
Silly sci-fi covered in patriotism sauce? There can be only one speech we can post here:
A new version of maneuver warfare is being utilized mainly by Islamic fundamentalist forces to seize territory from government forces trained, equipped and organized along the Western model. This “new blitzkrieg” relies on lightly armed fighters mounted on “technicals” – 4x4 trucks with heavy machine-guns, light cannons, or automatic grenade launchers mounted on the vehicle. Here are some key factors we should be thinking about in order to potentially combat these forces in the future. This isn’t new. The exact same tactics were used by the Taliban in 1994 to seize massive areas of...
Greetings, PhD Class of 2019. Welcome. We are excited for your arrival on campus later this summer. As you enjoy your summer, I thought I’d take this opportunity to write you with some advice for your next adventure. My comments are just based on my personal experiences but I thought maybe they would be of use to you as you start your PhD. My first set of comments all revolve around one basic point: this isn’t an extension of undergrad. The early course work you do in preparation for your PhD should be thought of as something completely different from your past experiences. Even...