Intra-elite, state-centric society is a strategic front, and ought to be defended and put to use in the continued development of a global and decolonial turn in IR.
A reckoning with the traditional diplomatic community
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Academia
Bridging the Gap between Research and Policy: Lessons from Co-Creation in the Aid Sector
There is an increasing focus in academic and policy circles on research-policy partnerships. These partnerships are often achieved through co-creation, or “the joint production of innovation between...
Half-Baked Thoughts on ChatGPT and the College Essay
I replicated the go-to method for using ChatGPT to “cheat” on college essays. Here are my takeaways.
All hail International Relations’ lack of discipline!
UPDATE: As a commenter helpfully pointed out, the person whose tweet I'm responding to was a political science Professor, not a historian. This kind of messes with the framing of this post but...
More Academia Posts
The job market sucks for international students
The academic job market is terrible. It’s worse for international students.
Why isn’t IR funnier?
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?
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 the world. I thought it was also worth asking what effects these attacks had on the sub-field of international relations, particularly mainstream security studies. The answer? Not much. As a result of these attacks, IR should have abandoned its secular, state-centric focus and explored these interconnecting elements of the twentieth century, revolutionizing the...
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 from two cranes. A parade, I was told, was in the offing. To anyone not looking at a calendar the scene would easily be confused for the celebration of America’s national day on the Fourth of July. But whereas July Fourth marks an event of success—national self-determination—yesterday marks a day of loss. But also failure. Failure of Americans and their policymakers in the run up to the September...
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.