What's the book? Sebastian Schmidt. 2020. Armed Guests: Territorial Sovereignty and Foreign Military Basing (New York, Oxford University Press). The argument? The United States maintains a massive global military footprint. Some of its overseas military bases are...
As many of our readers have likely already heard, Robert Jervis died yesterday. The field has lost a gentle intellectual giant. Unlike many of my friends from Columbia, Bob wasn't on my dissertation...
rofessor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in...
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls....
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls. Questions remain about how Afghans want to see women’s rights protected. A notorious Afghan proverb...
Academics depend on slow processes subject to unfortunate slowdowns. And, unfortunately, academic timelines can make or break careers.
Business meetings are part of the “hidden curriculum,” academia’s unwritten set of rules They’re also important to attend, especially for those scholars most likely to be unfamiliar with those rules. This post explains why – and what more senior scholars can do to get junior ones involved.
Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards. Less than four months ago, Hancock resigned in ignominy, caught breaking his own social distancing rules when he and an aide had an affair in his Whitehall office. Yet, after a brief summer holiday, he’s now been resurrected, appointed a UN special representative in sub-Saharan Africa. Why do we allow political leaders to revive their careers after they’ve failed miserably? Who, exactly, wants more of Matt Hancock?
In this installment of “Whiskey Optional,” Stacie Goddard (Wellesley), Evelyn Goh (Australian Nat…
Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her childhood and growing up on a farm in Buckinghamshire in SE England, her interests and aspirations during that time and the family dynamics regarding politics and who was expected to take over the farm...
Divorces don’t usually send shockwaves through the global policy field. They almost never create uncertainty about the health of hundreds of millions of people. The split between Bill and Melinda Gates is doing both. It affects the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has an...
Professor Rebecca Adler-Nissen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Adler-Nissen is a proflic scholar known for her work on diplomacy, integration, practice theory, and her deep knowledge and use of social theory. She talks to Brent about growing up in Denmark, but also Israel and the...
Numerous pundits have lamented the that Americans have not responded to the Covid pandemic with the unanimity they demonstrated after 9/11. But do we really want to return to the post-9/11 era of emergency consensus?
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?
Though unlikely to happen any time soon, recent calls for the US to pay reparations to the Afghan people provide an opportunity to reflect on the complexities of reparations and global justice.
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.