Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
Russia has been one of the spectres haunting the US presidential election. President Obama’s latest press conference is a case in point: Mr. Trump's continued flattery of Mr. Putin, and the degree...
This is a life or death election for women and girls all over the world. True, many precious human rights and civil rights are on the line. Those rights--and the lives they protect--matter deeply...
Thanks to the Duck editorial board for having me join to guest blog for the next six months. I'm looking forward to being part of the conversation here. I bring experience working with the Senate on...
Did you see the photos like the one above out of Shanghai? For the first time ever, Shanghai's air pollution, like Beijing's before it, exceeded the scale for particulate matter. For the past seven days, the air quality has been so bad that schools and flights were cancelled, cars were forced off the roads, industries were shut down (Though a marathon last Monday went on as planned. Runners complained that their lungs hurt. Go figure!). This post follows up my previous one a couple of weeks ago on whether China can gets its air quality problems under control. That was essentially the text...
Have yourself a gender-neutral Christmas, let your toys be yellow. From now on our princess costumes and toy guns will be out of sight.... Well, you try to rhyme with this material. The Daily Mail asked yesterday "how to shop for gender neutral toys" noting the sea of blue and pink dividing stores like Toys R Us. But when Toys R Us introduced a gender-neutral toy catalog, in Sweden, France, Finland, Norway, Germany, Denmark and France- featuring Spider-Man pushing a pink pram and a young girl wielding a gun- conservatives bucked, calling the images brainwashing and 'male hatred.' Play...
We're a few weeks into the call for nominations for the 2014 OAIS Awards. It's time to get serious. We've had a number of impressive nominations, but given the excellent content out there, we're looking for a much larger pool of nominees. We want to hear your suggestions. Post your nominations in the comments section below -- you may also email us a nomination directly. Please specify the award in the body of the text, provide the name of the blog, and a URL. Nominations close on 1 January 2014. Remember, finalists will be selected by popular vote, which will run from 5 January-31 January...
The effort to develop a single 5th generation fighter plane has been a challenge for the US and its allies. The F-35 is very expensive and may underperform. The quality of debate about this plane has varied. So, we turn to the experts for a reasoned discussion of the F-35 and an alternative: Does that help make up some minds? Ok, so a Boeing subcontractor made it, but I find it convincing... do you? H/T to @drfarls for the suggestion
With the assumption of an ongoing global cyber arms race, Western governments signed an agreement to limit the sharing and selling of dangerous cyber technologies. David Livingstone notes, “[Cyber security technology] is a lot like the arms race. What you want to do is slow down how fast your foe develops equivalent technologies.” This is an important and needed step in the cyber discourse and I look forward to reading the details of how exactly these governments plan to limit the transfer of cyber technologies. The process might not be as difficult as one would expect given that computer...
In 1987, I was a high school sophomore and somehow, no doubt through rock music, became aware of the anti-apartheid struggle. As it was for President Obama, the movement to end apartheid was my political baptism. It's what got me engaged and interested in global politics. I remember going to the Texas A&M campus and participating in meetings of Students Against Apartheid. I joined rallies to encourage the university to divest from any investments in U.S. companies doing business in South Africa. Hearing of Nelson Mandela's death today brought all those memories back and prompted me to...
One of the recurring subjects among folks using data is: why does person x not share their data with me? Mostly because they are fearful and ignorant. Fearful? That their work will get scooped and/or their data might be found to be problematic. Ignorant? That they don't know that they are obligated to share their data once they publish off of it and that it is in their interest to share their data. There is apparently a belief out there that data should be shared only after the big project is published, not after the initial work has been published. I will address this as well as the...
This week's stories have no unifying theme other than they kind of capture the end of term mood, a certain grumpiness on the part of the writer (Bjorn Lomborg's tsk tsking of clean energy advocates, Paul Collier's screed against immigration) or not altogether pleasant images (an elephant run amok in a wedding, modern conflict with bows and arrows). Happy grading! Or dissertating! Or turning in those final papers! Enjoy. (My wife pointed out a hopeful Iranian "Yes We Can" video of Rouhani so all is not bleak!). Get off My Lawn: The Written Version Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptical...