A distinctly unoriginal take on the pathologies of overvaluing academic “novelty.”
Get off my lawn! Are journal demands for “novelty” creating a culture of low-level academic dishonesty?
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Academia
Is “Camp Qual” really our best option?
This is a guest response to Simon Frankel Pratt's musing on methods. Lucas Dolan is a PhD Candidate at American University's School of International Service. In a recent contribution, Simon Frankel...
The peace, women’s suffrage and reproductive rights activist you might not know: Aletta Jacobs.
Aletta Jacobs. Raise your hand if you have never heard her name! In our neck of the tulip fields, however, she is a celebrated professional: she was the first woman to be officially enrolled and...
A Marx Allergy
If you are allergic to, let’s say peanuts, you would always carefully check the packaging of the food you buy: does the factory use them? Can there be traces in the sauce? After an unpleasant...
More Academia Posts
Contentious Politics on College Campuses: Where does Political Science fit in?
This is a co-authored post with Carrie Booth Walling, Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Albion College. She is the author of All Necessary Measures: the United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention and articles on human rights trials, mass atrocity crimes, and the Security Council. About a year ago, we started having frequent, intense conversations about how we could most effectively respond to increasing political polarization, heightened racial tensions, and recent bias incidents on our college campuses. The more we talked, the more we realized that political...
The Book Nook: The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs
Our second Bridging the Gap Book Nook entry comes from Sarah Stroup of Middlebury College and Wendy Wong of the University of Toronto, who discuss their new book The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs (Cornell, 2017).
Emotions, Unconscious Bias, and Publishing
This is a guest post by Jana von Stein, Senior Lecturer, Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) The recent scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuse and harassment of dozens of women has gotten me thinking about an experience I had not too long ago. To be sure, there are differences: what happened to me was not sexual, my suffering was short-lived, and I sought justice. But there were at least two important similarities: my experience was deeply gendered and offensive, and I didn't tell many people. Why?...
Writing in Exile: A Belated Birthday Card
“In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’.” ~Hannah Arendt This past weekend was a weekend full of birthdays. Hannah Arendt’s 111th birthday fell on Saturday (October 14th), and—in an interesting coincidence—Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche share a birthday (October 15th). I teach and write about Foucault and Arendt, and there is a Nietzschean spirit in both, though Arendt’s engagement with his work ended abruptly with her death. In honor of all three, I want to make some notes—sketches really—of what it means to write in exile, and, by extension, to teach in exile. I...
National Security Generalists and Learning the Lessons From Lost Wars
A friend posted this piece on facebook: "Why Nerds Should Not Be In Charge of War." It draws from the new PBS Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick to argue that it happened because of the prominent role played by "generalists." Yes, Robert McNamara and his gang of Whiz Kids are mighty arrogant, and they have much blame to share for the war. Indeed, McNamara, unlike certain other arrogant former SecDefs, has spent the time since trying to grapple with what he had wrought. There is something to the idea that we need folks involved who are regional experts. Indeed, there...
Teaching about Death and Violence: Thoughts from a Professor Who Calls Nevada Home
After the horrific attack in Las Vegas on Sunday, 1 October, the question of knowledge should be key to our understanding of this event. What do we know? What can we recall? The first thing that comes to mind is likely numbers, statistics, values attributed to life. We know now that the death toll is at 59. The injured number 527. The killer had 18 guns at his home. He shot from the 32nd floor at a rate of 400-800 rounds per minute (6-13 rounds per second). We know numbers. Surely, this quantification of death gives us important information, but what does it do in regards to the way we...
The Poverty of Style in IR
As one of the new Ducks, I will from now on be posting diversely on a range of topics including political violence, the status of critique in IR, and professional issues that will be of particular interest to early career scholars and PhD students. For my first post, however, I want to write about the style of writing IR and/or Political Science. This is something that has troubled me for some time now and on which – I think – I depart slightly from the mainstream view of things. To begin, let me quote the author’s ‘style’ guidelines for the ISA journal International Studies Quarterly: Favor...
The Book Nook: The CIA and the Politics of US Intelligence Reform
Today we begin the Bridging the Gap "Book Nook," a series of short videos describing new books by scholars in the BTG network. For the first entry, our very own Brent Durbin discusses his book, The CIA and the Politics of US Intelligence Reform (Cambridge, 2017). (We hope to do a bunch of these, and we would welcome any thoughts on how to improve the format!)