While political comedy thrives, IR comedy, whatever that phrase might mean, is virtually non-existent. omedy gap’? Is it a figment of my imagination or a real problem?
Why isn’t IR funnier?
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The Duck of Minerva
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Recent Posts
Did Security Studies learn from 9/11?
The twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone. We've reflected on what led to the attacks, its human toll, how well America handled it, and what impacts the US response has had on...
9/11 remembrance and the stories we tell
Taking my children to their dance class yesterday morning in Quincy, MA I found, as the traffic ground to a halt, the town center draped in red, white, and blue bunting. A giant flag hung suspended...
Does Academic Karma Exist?
Many of academia’s core institutions are ‘held together by masking tape and pixie dust.’ But do they also rely on fantastical notions of academic karma?
About Academia
More Academia Posts
Does Academic Karma Exist?
Many of academia’s core institutions are ‘held together by masking tape and pixie dust.’ But do they also rely on fantastical notions of academic karma?
The Promise and Peril of Public-Facing Scholarship
Paul Musgrave concludes the “Lab Leaks” symposium by engaging with his interlocutors and reflecting on the challenges faced by political science in an era of public-facing scholarship.
They Blinded Them With Science
Musgrave’s identification of dangerous ideas is correct, but his metaphor risks entrenching the fundamental problem: the (inevitable) weaponization of “scientific objectivity.”
Leaving the lab
Perhaps the problem isn’t that theories leak from the lab, but efforts to seal the lab in the first place. If political scientists spent more time observing the policy world, me might get both better and more careful theories in the first place.
The Leakage Between Political Science and Policy Goes Both Ways
Political Science isn’t sterile laboratory. The discipline is riddled with politics and deeply influenced by policy concerns.
How Can We Vaccinate Against Viral Political Science?
Some political-science lab leaks are more difficult to control than others.
The Democratic Peace isn’t a Virus
Paul Musgrave has written an important piece discussing how ideas developed within academia can have profoundly negative effects when they escape into the wild of the policymaking world. For someone like me who has been involved for many years in the Bridging the Gap project, whose...
So you’re thinking about Professing Abroad…
If there's one thing that American political scientists agree about, it's that the U.S. "job market" is pretty brutal. It's not uncommon for junior scholars to bounce between postdocs and visiting positions before getting a tenure-track job or a stable non-tenure-track position – or before...
Dealing with the Digital Mob
Academics are increasingly becoming targets of online harassment, but too many universities and colleges are unprepared to support and protect their faculty. What steps should they take?
Adam Sandler and the Rise of the Rest: Theoretical Myopia and the Liberal International Order
Film critics have approached Adam Sandler’s films the same way that IR scholars have analyzed the rise and fall of the Liberal International Order (LIO)
How Quals can avoid becoming our own worst enemies
Simple steps to promote qualitative research in journals It happened again. After months of waiting, you finally got that "Decision" email: Rejection. That's not so bad, it happens to everyone. But it's the nature of the rejection that gets to you. The reviewers (you assume fellow quals) didn't...
Is it time to abandon in-person academic conferences? or “Who’s kind of meh on going to APSA?”
I get the sense that lots of scholars are viewing the return (sooner or later) of in-person conference with a good deal of ambivalence. Is it time to take all conference online?