Episode 14 – Harry Gould

7 11 2020

Harry Gould of Florida International University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent and Harry have known one another since 2007, and have become best friends. 

Harry talks about growing up in Florida, the formative experience of watching the Iranian Revolution unfold and becoming interesting in international politics, going to New College of Florida and deciding the foreign service wasn’t for him. He chats about Master’s work at FIU with Nick Onuf, the background to his 1998 study on the agent-structure debate, and his decision to pursue a PhD at Johns Hopkins. Harry talks about the environment at Hopkins, where he met Andrew A.G. Ross, and where he did his PhD work supervised by Siba Grovogui. He relays how he got a Visiting position at FIU while working on his dissertation and going on the market and getting a tenure track position at FIU.  We talk about the 2007 ISA where thanks to Tony Lang’s initiative we all met one another on a panel he organized. He discusses the development of his 2010 book on Punishment, how he decompresses and how he approaches writing. Harry and I conclude with some reflections on a difficult topic – how we deal with the loss of close academic friends.