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Academia
On Inconvenient Findings
This post was written by Marie Berry and Milli Lake, co-founders and principal investigators of the Women’s Rights After War Project. Dr. Berry is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of...
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...
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...
More Academia Posts
Let’s talk about mental health
.@APSAtweets @MPSAnet @isanet We are losing colleagues to depressive disorders, & many others suffer silently. The pressure in our profession is insane & often unhealthy. — Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) April 19, 2017 Take care of yourselves political scientists. Hug a loved one. Phone a friend. Get outside. Get help if needed. — Josh Busby (@busbyj2) April 19, 2017 RIP Brother Will (Moore)! It's said that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes we are lucky enough to stand next to them. Peace — christian davenport (@engagedscholar) April 19, 2017 There have been some high...
An Academic Woman’s Rant of the Week: Service Discrepancies
There’s a new article today on Inside Higher Ed that talks about recent research in the journal Research in Higher Education on discrepancies in faculty service loads. Not surprisingly, the article finds that “women faculty perform significantly more service than men.” I think this is known; it’s why a lot of women are counseled to just say “no” whenever possible. As the article states, women are just more likely to “take care of the academic family.” Groan. What is, perhaps, somewhat surprising are the differences in the types of service that women and men perform. Women are more likely...
The Trump Syllabus: Duck Input Needed!
Even though ISA provided some much-needed group therapy, in the end we still need to grapple with and teach about #45. I was inspired by some ideas in syllabi 1, 2, and 3, but I also needed some background information and topics that are geared towards a non-American audience. On top of it, I left the theme of one session open for the students to decide on. So below is roughly what my students are in for at the University of Bremen. Any ideas how to improve it? Unit 1: Sources DEMAGOGUERY AND DEMOCRACY Finley, M. (1962). Athenian Demagogues. Past & Present, (21), 3-24. Further reading:...
Perhaps Our Incentives Are Not as Perverse as Believed: Are Citation Counts the Devil?
I have regularly seen stuff online or in academic publications complaining about professionalization and what it has meant for Political Science. The basic idea is that things were great before people became focused on stuff like citation counts, which has led to all kinds of perverse incentives. The main complaint, it seems, is that scholars will try to game citations and this will force them into bad habits and away from good work, like thinking big thoughts (grand theory). To be sure, as John Regehr illustrated so well, academics are smart at gaming systems: While the first one listed...
Friday Nerd Blogging Tribute to An Old Duck-ster
Robert Kelly used to blog here before he made the big-time on the BBC, so here's a salute via Friday nerd-blogging. BEAUTIFUL pic.twitter.com/EQo7JJJ8gW — Lindsey B (@lindseybieda) March 17, 2017
Revisiting Trump’s Challenges to Doctoral Students: A Round of Trump Bingo
This is a guest post from Ariya Hagh, Andrew Szarejko, and Laila Wahedi. All three authors are doctoral students in Georgetown University’s Department of Government. Author order is alphabetical by last name. In a December 2016 post here at the Duck of Minerva, we considered how a Trump presidency might affect doctoral students within our discipline. We necessarily relied upon statements that Donald Trump and his advisors made before the inauguration. Now that we are more than a month into the presidency, it is worth revisiting our claims to see what we got right and what we missed, while...
Let’s Talk About Contingency (Part 2)
In my previous post, I started a discussion about full-time contingent faculty in the profession. Given that contingent faculty work is very much gendered, I wanted to continue that discussion today with a focus on how the discipline at large can better serve the growing ranks of faculty working off the tenure track. Most of the data I presented in my last post came from the American Political Science Association (APSA) and examined the outcomes for job-seekers on the U.S. job market. As you may recall, one of the big takeaways was that early career scholars on the job market are now more...
Girl Power
Women in academia do not enjoy an easy ride. Even though “manel” count at this year’s ISA was much lower, there is still work to be done. Not to mention the recent scandal about the epidemic levels of sexual harassment at the UK universities. But let's rejoice at the thought that a mere hundred years ago things were much worse. My university campus in Bremen has a Lise-Meitner-Strasse and the International Women's Day is a good opportunity to share her story. In short, Hidden Figures needs to have a German prequel. Lise Meitner was born in 1878 into an upper-class Jewish family in Vienna...