Renowned international relations scholar and practitioner Joseph S. Nye passed away last week. Numerous tributes have been written, noting his high quality scholarship and influence on US foreign policy. While most have discussed his major idea--soft power--I'd...
I wrote a chapter for a newly published edited volume, Teaching Political Science and International Relations for Early Career Instructors. The volume itself, capably edited by Michael P.A. Murphy...
A lot of ink has been spilled and bytes spent on the reflections over Trump's failed assassination this past weekend. I won't pretend I know better, although as a regular academic that's kind of my...
This is the fifth in our series of remembrances on the late Susan Sell. There was a terrific gathering at ISA 2024 where friends and colleagues gathered to remember Susan's wit, her contributions to...
Even when Latin Americans are allowed to speak, IR scholars and practitioners do not listen to them due to the language in which they produce knowledge, epistemic violence and access barriers.
Decolonial methods, and the bringing of attention to race in knowledge production is necessarily historical. It demands a close re-reading of archives, forgotten texts, and sometimes “canonical” works. As a result, through this special issue and the wider work the authors build upon, we now have a very different understanding of the historical entanglements of race and international affairs knowledge.
The International Affairs Centenary Special Issue on “Race and Imperialism in International Relations: Theory and Practice” was published two years ago in the aftermath of the global Black Lives Matter movement; it marked an atypical period of introspection by many scholars, departments, and journals of International Relations on the general paucity of attention given to matters of race and imperialism in IR research and teaching.
Over the past few decades, Political Science has seen an increasing institutionalization of Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through journals, book series, and professional associations. Over at PS: Political Science and Politics, we add to this body of literature by making the case for a pedagogical practice borrowed from Professional Military Education (PME)—the staff ride. A staff ride combines the study of historical campaigns with structured visits to relevant sites and after-action analysis, offering a unique and immersive learning experience. While staff rides originate in...
This is the fourth post in our series of remembrances on the late Susan Sell. Susan and I were both conducting research in Geneva in the summer of 2022, she was at the World Trade Organization, and I was working in the archives at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Our hotels were right next to each other, so we met up one night and walked along Lake Geneva into town looking for a place for dinner. As we sat down, Susan, in her inimitable way, scrunched up her face in both disgust and disbelief—the man next to us was chain smoking and blowing smoke our way. I chuckled. Susan was...
This is the third in our series of remembrances on the late scholar Susan Sell. Professor Susan Sell was a world class scholar. But even though one of the papers she wrote (about using ideas strategically) was very influential in my personal intellectual development, I don’t want to say something about that. The thing I want to say about Susan is that she was the antithesis to so many of the negative tendencies that you can see in academia, while at the same time holding the highest intellectual standards. In this way she is a personal hero to me and a model for how I...
This is the second in our series of remembrances on the late scholar Susan Sell. Since I learned of Susan’s untimely passing on Christmas Eve, I’ve been trying to articulate exactly how important Susan was to me, both professionally and personally. It’s especially hard since Susan is pretty much the reason why I have a career in academia. So, I’ll write about the second time I met Susan. It was April 2013. I was nine months into my first academic post, a tenure-track assistant professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Susan’s ground-breaking work on the international political...
This is the first in a series of remembrances on life and career of the late Susan Sell. When I think about Susan Sell, I think about a life lived unapologetically, beautifully, and gratefully. I think about International Relations theory taught with irreverence and humility. I think about relentless kindness and fiery hope personified. Susan was the first professor I had in graduate school, and although I learned so much from her class on International Relations theory, the most important lessons were those that were never actually part of the curriculum. I distinctly remember Susan coming...