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
What makes for a successful conference?
Like many, I've finally gotten back on schedule after the American Political Science Association conference last week. The travel was easier for me than most others; the site, Montreal, is only two...
Our syllabi should be full of surprises
It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.
Five Lessons for responsible engagement when the world is on fire
Waves of global crises have generated challenges in nearly every corner of human life. Catastrophic climate change, an ever-morphing global pandemic, widening democratic decline, rising economic...
More Academia Posts
My Yes and No Committees Approved the Writing of This Post
This post is written by Bridging the Gap Fellow Dr. Danielle Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Military & Strategic Studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not represent the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Department of the Air Force, or the Department of Defense. The author would like to thank the brilliant women of her yes and no committees for their time, feedback, permission, and encouragement to write this—you know who you are. Six women approved the writing of this post: my “yes committee,” my “no committee,” and the...
The lazy Orientalism of Wonder Woman 1984
WARNING: Minor Spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984 ahead Like many Americans, I ended my Christmas day by paying $15 to subscribe to HBO Max and watch Wonder Woman 1984. The much anticipated sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman promised to make the horrors of 2020 fade for awhile. And it did, but only by replacing them with frustration and confusion. It...wasn't a great film. You can read why, or just watch it yourself. But what really stuck out to me was the particular sort of Orientalism it contained, a lazy Orientalism oblivious to its political implications but still problematic. Wonder Woman 1984...
The True Meaning of a Hot Christmas Prince
In the spirit of holiday cheer and Paul Musgrave's great Foreign Policy piece "The True Meaning of Christmas Movies Is a Cozy American Worldview" as well as our common poli sci curse of "being unable to enjoy anything without analysing it to death", here is my take on that red and green scourge that clogs your Netflix queue as well as your cable. I have watched a fair amount of those in my day (for research purposes, obvs), but might be missing something, so correct me if I am wrong. I can't refresh my memory right away, as those movies lack dinosaur subplots and that's the only type of...
Voldemort, Trump, and the other usual suspects of Putin’s press conference
Klimentyev, RIA Novosti. Sing it with me: It’s the most Putinist time of the year! For the 16th time the Dear Leader addressed the nation and the world from through their TV screens during a carefully choreographed almost 5-hour long annual press conference that could count as a State of the Union Q&A. there were some adjustments to the usual format: the lidded cup was still there, but almost no journalists in the actual room with Putin, his answers were televised from his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. It’s almost impossible to go through all the press conference and not bore the readers...
Writing about Violence During the Pandemic
This is guest post from Philipp Schulz, a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. His work focuses on the gender dynamics of political violence, armed conflict and post-conflict transitions, with a focus on wartime sexual violence. Writing, and researching, about violence is never easy, involving complex ethical, moral, methodological and epistemologieschallenges. This makes it difficult enough to write about violence under ‘ordinary’ circumstances and in ‘normal times’ – and most...
Fare thee Well Sean Kay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKQ4-AHgFEs I opened up my twitter feed two weeks ago to some terrible news: our friend Sean Kay died suddenly. I literally cried out "Oh no" and wept for my friend. I had just guested in his class in October, and we had a number of conversations in recent months in the lead up to the election. We were both looking forward to a better future. The news of Sean's death was just another reminder that 2020 has been truly awful.Many knew Sean through his scholarship and policy work on NATO. I got to know him over the last few years through our common interests in...
Can IR Have Its Own “Big 3” Journals?
This is a guest post by Krista Wiegand, Director of the Global Security Program at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee. She is co-Editor-in-Chief of International Studies Quarterly. I was once asked on a job interview by a non-IR political scientist why I hadn’t published in the “big 3” journals – American Political Science Review (APSR), American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), and Journal of Politics (JOP). My response was that I had published in top IR journals where my IR colleagues read my work. I...
Ignoble Lies? The Problem of Prosocial Lying in the Economics Profession
Photo credit: pixy.org under Creative Commons license. This is a guest post by George DeMartino, professor of international economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. This post is the first in an occasional series discussing the ethical dilemmas engendered when academics engage with policymakers and the broader public. This series is part of the Rigor, Relevance, and Responsibility project of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security & Diplomacy, which seeks to make ethical considerations an integral...