The Duck of Minerva

Steve Saideman

Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.

Recent Posts

Ignorance of the Ivory Tower: What Do the Profs Know About the Military

by Steve Saideman | 20 September, 2018 |

I woke up to find a piece that castigates the academic world for being ignorant about the armed forces.  My reaction was: I love how broad this brush is. "I talked to some folks who are profs and they say some dumb stuff, so let's suggest that this is a broader thing" Confirmation bias much? https://t.co/jWhcaniD2B — Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) September 20, 2018 Tom Ricks, who posted this questionable piece, pushed back: I'm throwing a penalty flag here, professor. If you think he is wrong, tell us why. Is he? https://t.co/bTvRQiMekX — Thomas E. Ricks (@tomricks1) September 20, 2018 I will...

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Advice for the New Professor

by Steve Saideman | 5 August, 2018 |

As August accelerates and academics panic as their summer dreams/plans meet the harsh reality that one usually does not get done all that they want to do, it is time to give unsolicited advice to the new folks.  For great advice on how to manage one's mental and emotional well-being, see this thread.  I have some more tactical advice about expectations and getting through the first year, as I remember making the same mistake three times on the first day of teaching. Be Realistic: you will not be able to produce as much research as you hope because your first time teaching on your own...

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Explaining the Academic Job Market To Friends and Family

by Steve Saideman | 25 July, 2018 |

This topic came up on twitter--how do we get our friends and relatives to understand the academic job market?  My first take: don't bother.  It can get really confusing really fast.  I consider my family well-educated, yet deep into my career, my mother thought that my appearances on TV and radio would help me get another job.  Nope. Given that job market season is approaching (sorry!),* here's my listicle of things you have to explain: 1. The Adjusted Bar Closing rule: you can't go home, but you can't stay here.  Few grad programs will hire their own products at all, and very, very few hire...

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The Tyranny of the Big 3? Which Journals Count Most May Be Increasingly Problematic

by Steve Saideman | 26 April, 2018 |

In recent days, there has been much discussion about the so-called Big3 journals in Political Science: the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics.  Each is the standard-bearer journal for their respective associations--the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association and the Southern Political Science Association. Over the years, these three journals have become seen as the most prominent journals in the discipline.  For some American universities, for the purposes of hiring, tenure and...

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Social Media is Bad For Your Career? Maybe Not, a 2018 Ignite Talk

by Steve Saideman | 16 April, 2018 |

Today, there was a twitter conversation about whether doing public engagement, especially blogging and twitter, are penalized or not.  The timing is good since my Ignite talk at the Duckies was very much on this stuff.  So, I thought I would share what I presented at the Online Media Caucus reception at the annual meeting of the ISA in San Francisco. The basic theme was: there are things people tell you not to do, so let me know show how I did them.  I did start by acknowledging my privilege--that a white male straight tenured prof can get away with more stuff than other folks (thanks,...

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What’s in a Syllabus? A New Dataset of Graduate School Readings in Political Science

by Steve Saideman | 2 April, 2018 | ,

This is a guest post by  Heidi Hardt (University of California, Irvine) and Amy Erica Smith (Iowa State University) Syllabi and comprehensive exam reading lists are often graduate students’ first major exposure to political science. In the field of IR, they tell students what scholarship matters for the field and - by omission – what doesn’t matter quite as much. What students read as graduate students likely influences some of what they cite later in their academic careers. What then exactly is in these important documents? Our new dataset GRADS – the GRaduate Assignments DataSet aims to...

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NATO and the Classic Problem of Measuring Inputs vs. Outcomes

by Steve Saideman | 11 February, 2018 |

I tend to complain a lot about the NATO 2% expectation--that members are supposed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense stuff, which probably makes more more Canadian than anything else I do (I don't skate or watch hockey much).  This is aspirational and countries are supposed to reach it by 2024.  I have written much about why this is problematic (it tends to make Greece look good, which is a clue; doing is more important than spending, etc), but today I want to focus on the heart of the matter: 2% is a measure of input and nothing else. The basic idea is if we all spend a significant hunk of...

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Beware of Irrelevant Topic? Advising Phd Students to Surf the Wave

by Steve Saideman | 18 January, 2018 |

In the past couple of days, an academic issue has played out on twitter: are advisers doing a disservice to students and to the creation of knowledge by warning them off of topics that are deemed less relevant, less in the moment?  Damned if I know. On the one hand, I have heard plenty of tales of former/current students elsewhere that say that they were interested in a topic, but their adviser told them it was not so relevant or interesting, and then the world changed.  One reason I don't remember telling students not to do a topic (besides the fact that I have a lousy memory) is that I am...

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Challenges to the Contemporary World Order

by Steve Saideman | 13 December, 2017 |

A guest post by Thomas Pepinsky, is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and Stefanie Walter,  Full Professor for International Relations and Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Many observers of contemporary global politics conclude that the present moment represents one of the most unsettled times in global politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shock events such as the Brexit vote, the continued success of radical right populists in continental Europe, the continuing Eurozone crisis, and the unprecedented foreign...

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Are Potential Peer Reviewers Overwhelmed Altruists or Free-Riders? New data reveal great inequality in peer reviewing in the social sciences.

by Steve Saideman | 13 November, 2017 |

This is a guest post submitted by Paul A. Djupe, Denison University Political Science, who is an affiliated scholar with PRRI ; Amy Erica Smith, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University; and Anand Edward Sokhey, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, as well as the associate director of the American Politics Research Lab and the incoming director of the LeRoy Keller Center for the Study of the First Amendment. Google “peer review crisis,” and you will find dozens of pieces — some dating back to the 1990s —lamenting the...

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