Mostly, I muddled through grad school, but with the support of my cohort and guidance from a few choice people, I was able to navigate my way through the uncertainty of graduate school.
We're happy to announce some new guest Ducks, some old guests staying on, and additions to our permanent contributors. In reverse order, Jarrod Hayes and Heather Roff-Perkins have joined us as...
The following is a guest post by Nives Dolšak, Professor, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Aseem Prakash, Professor, Department of Political...
With the bombing of the UN aid convoy in Syria and fresh attacks on Aleppo after the Assad regime declared the ceasefire over, American and UN officials are in need of a Plan B. Now that trust...
What does any faculty member REALLY want for the holidays? It’s not a Lexus, it’s not jewelry, it’s a brand new revise-and-resubmit (R&R) manuscript. It’s really all that is on my list every year. That and, of course, world peace. How can one get an R&R manuscript? So far, I think R&R decisions are the result of the following four conditions: (a)   Good work without any serious theoretical or empirical flaws (b)  An introduction that doesn’t make the reviewers/editor think the piece is crap from the get-go (c)   All reviewers are pretty positive about the manuscript (d)  ...
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Rights groups criticize incendiary attacks in Syria. Important new report on Syrian child casualties. On corpse-counting in former war zones. "Terminator ethics" discussions among autonomous weapons proponents. Momentum among humanitarian stakeholders how to curb explosive violence. 972 Mag on tensions between animal rights and human rights movements. Time on how trauma journalism worsens relief efforts in the Phillipines. Killer Apps on US military basing and humanitarianism. Drone Wars Obama Administration is under fire again on drones after drones hit...
Two steps forward, two steps back. Just as three women completed training in the Marines for the first time- and as the US Military works to integrate women in to the combat arms, a top female US Colonel has lost her job because she asked for "average looking women" to be used in communications. Col. Lynette Arnhart had been leading the effort to open more infantry roles for women in the army by January 1 2016. Politico first broke this story, noting that Arnhart had recommended avoiding using attractive women in communications because: “In general, ugly women are perceived as competent...
Last week, I finally had the opportunity to read Lisa Martin’s recent piece on compliance entitled Against Compliance. Prof. Martin meticulously evaluates the literature on compliance and concludes that compliance is the wrong dependent variable to uncover the causal effect of international law on state behavior. Martin’s review of compliance studies is comprehensive and her analysis is sound. She correctly identifies the conceptual and empirical problems that continue to trouble compliance research. Against Compliance prompted me to rethink long and hard about compliance, and stars aligned...
It is time for an academic Thanksgiving (at least it is for me, flew home early because it was Reading Week in the UK), that time of year when we give thanks for when our ancestral academic Deans fed us when we were hungry. Something like that...cornucopia with grants, laptops, and travel funds.  Who knows how it all started. Still, it is that time of year we all reflect on what we are thankful for.  So what am I thankful for, as an academic? For one, I am thankful for Laura Sjoberg's contributions to the Duck of Minerva. She has not been posting regularly for some time but her...
I realize I am putting my Twitter standings at great risk by potentially appearing to make light of an important social issue.* But when I found this treatise on the importance of tighter regulations for dragons I couldn't resist sharing. Happy Friday! Game of Thrones - Dragon Control by TheShortsShow *Though I hate to disagree with anyone whose work I admire so greatly, and though no one can really argue with Katee Sakhoff's call for gun safety, as a political scientist I must say that Sakhoff is wrong on gun control. First, there is important evidence from experimental studies that on...
Following on my round of links on Thursday, this is a guest post from Jennifer Hadden from the University of Maryland who is in Warsaw at the global climate negotiations (follow her on Twitter here). Yeb Saño, Climate Change Commissioner of the Philippines, opened the annual negotiations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change last week by making an emotional appeal to delegates to "stop the madness" and act decisively on climate change. As of Thursday evening, there have been two three walkouts by the G77/China on the issue of 'loss and damage' and a substantial and broad-based...
The annual climate negotiations are going on at the moment in Warsaw, Poland. For long-time observers of the process, they have a Groundhog Day-esque quality to them. Every year the same issues seem to come up again and again, and it's unclear if there has been any meaningful progress or if each negotiation is more or less a replay of what transpired the previous year, with divisions between developed and developing countries almost always ever-present. Rich countries aren't doing enough while poor countries and environmental activists are demanding greater action because there is a climate...