Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. He speaks about his decision, eventually, to focus on Rwanda as the basis for his dissertation.
Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. He speaks about his decision, eventually, to focus on Rwanda as the basis for his dissertation.
Hi, Ducks! It’s me, Amanda. It’s been a long time. I’ve not blogged in awhile. There were many reasons for the break. First, it was a busy spring: I finished up being the ISA Program Chair, got...
This has been going around: Why is this such a dumb counterfactual? Let me count the ways: Unlike parliamentary elections, individual voters could not vote for the full range of candidates--they...
As the summer is heating up, all the world’s eyes are on Britain. And that really is saying something for us Americans, what with the wild ride that Donald Trump is taking us all on. But even here,...
The world is buzzing with news that Germany has introduced a 'third sex'- or, the option to leave a child's gender as indeterminate. This raises a slough of questions and long-overdue discussion. Speaking of gender, Californians are debating a new law in California (AB 1266) that would allow trans-gender students to choose their preferred gender pronoun and identity. Critics worry that it would result in a violation of privacy (most of the concerns seem to be about boys using female bathrooms). Obama is pushing Congress to pass a bill that would prevent employers from discriminating on the...
OK, so it's not exactly Ali vs. Frazier, but NSA and the State Department are not happy with each other. From this morning's Cable at Foreign Policy, Yochi Dreazen reports: Secretary of State John Kerry touched off the furor when he said some of the NSA's overseas surveillance efforts -- which also included tapping into tens of millions of calls in France and Spain -- had been carried out without the Obama administration's knowledge or explicit approval. The remarks highlighted what appears to the White House's emerging strategy for dealing with widespread public fury over the programs:...
Happy Day After Halloween, folks. Resist the urge to steal your kid's candy. Once again, the internet is a magical place:
Aside from major sporting events, there have been a few items of import in the news. Health A new polio outbreak in Syria is endangering the drive for global eradication Climate Change A 2012 story that I missed, a drive to replace dirty cook stoves in India using experimental methods failed India not keen on addressing hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) -- a short-lived greenhouse gas -- through the Montreal Protocol Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia join forces on regional greenhouse gas reduction scheme and coordinated carbon prices Africa A drone strike kills an al Shabaab...
Drones are on the international agenda this week, with Pakistan excoriating the US at the General Assembly and with human rights heavyweights Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch launching a new and scathing joint report. OpenGlobalRights, OpenDemocracy's global-south-oriented human rights wing, is having a number of interesting articles on the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine: here, here and views on the subject from India here. New York Times Magazine's online coverage of the South China Sea territorial dispute breaks ground in mainstream multi-media journalism. Seriously, check...
There have been a spate of posts about why folks have quit academia.... so much so that Dan Drezner issued this challenge: Has anyone written a "Why I Haven't Quit the Academy" post yet? — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) October 27, 2013 So, I decided to figure out why I did not quit. Sure, looking backwards from where things stand now, it would have been a mistake to quit. Things have worked out really well for me, but that was hardly foreseeable and there were a couple of points along the way where quitting might have made sense: It took me three years to land a tenure track position,...
“The current blackout is a result of a cyber attack” “It will happen” Ominous words from the National Geographic channel and their premier movie this weekend. Not really sure how the news reporter can still report given the aforementioned blackout, and also not sure why toilets cease to work when you lose power, but the point is taken. We are all at the mercy of roving mobs of vigilantes because of the dangers of a cyber attack. I am counting the days until Western developed countries encourage people to duck and cover, like they did during the Cold War in the event of nuclear attacks, to...
The recent 'Maria' case- involving a young blonde girl taken from a Roma family and found to be the daughter of a Bulgarian Roma couple- has inspired greater scrutiny of Roma communities. More specifically, there have been subsequent cases of children taken from their Roma families because they did not 'look' Roma; however subsequent DNA tests confirmed the children to be the 'legitimate' biological children of their parents. A recent Spectator post calls the cases: a clash of "two great hysterias...racism and child-snatching, the Guardian’s obsession versus the Sun’s." These cases have...