A discussion with Nina Kollars and Mark Raymond about the SolarWinds hack, recorded in March, 2021
Episode 7: Duckcalls Events Series 1, Solarwinds discussion with Nina Kollars and Mark Raymond
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The White House Pushes for its Policies, and Other Surprises from Ben Rhodes
It seems that everyone (at least on the political right) is in a tizzy about the "revelations" in David Samuels' New York Times Magazine story on Ben Rhodes. For example, Lee Smith, at the Weekly...
Drones Kill More Civilians than Manned Aircraft Do. That’s Because of How We Use Them.
At Foreign Policy, CFR's Micah Zenko has examined the best civilian casualty data available for both manned airstrikes and drone strikes between 2009-2015 and concluded, pretty damningly, that...
So, You Want to Be a Liberal Arts College Professor: Life in the Liberal Arts edition (Part I)
[Note: This is the first of two guest posts on life in the Liberal Arts Colleges from Sarah Stroup and Amy Yuen, both Associate Professors of Political Science, Middlebury College] Job market season...
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Creative Rebranding? Human Rights vs. Human Security
I had a boy break up with me once by saying “we’re not breaking up, we’re taking a break.” I guess the boy assumed that “taking a break” would be easier for me to accept than “breaking up.” He was right: it took me a while[1] to actually figure out that “taking a break” was really synonymous with “breaking up.” For my teenage-girl angst, “taking a break” just sounded better. For the boy, “taking a break” was probably the safer option. In both advocacy and research concerning of how people are treated by governmental and non-governmental actors, I think the same type of linguistic...
Review of Braumoeller’s The Great Powers and the International System
The following is an all too common path through graduate school: spend 3-9 months wondering what the heck you signed up for and why realize that every topic you're interested in has been written on and assume there's nothing left to say gain a little confidence and criticize everything you read for leaving something (inconsequential) out begin doing your own research and realize it's not so easy write a dissertation about a very small, very timely, very answerable question convince your committee that your answer is profound, timeless, and required extraordinary insight cry when the first...
Monday morning linkage
The shutdown continues to dominate the day's news.Resolution still seems distant. Last week, US Treasury Department Secretary Jack Lew reminded the Senate that extraordinary measures used to cope with our current debt limit run out on Thursday. This weekend, IMF head Christine Lagarde says that a default could tip the world economy into recession. The African Union served up some of the more consequential international news over the past few days, first slamming the International Criminal Court for an allegedly anti-African bias and then demanding that trials against sitting presidents Omar...
Monday Morning Linkage- it’s all about balance
Women missing...online? The Huffington Post has reported that the gender gap exists online- with 200 million fewer women using the internet than men. Scholars, students, and the general public are set to sit in for a 6-hour editing party at Brown University to try to remedy the gender imbalance on wikipedia (NYT suggests that only 15% of its editors are women). One area where there is a little gender equality? Apparently there is equal gender representation of gay characters on US television. HBO has the most number of gay characters in total (duh). Jeni Klugman at Reuters wrote an...
Words of Mass Destruction in the Syria Debate
Note: This is a guest post by Ty Solomon, Lecturer at the University of Glasgow Even though the war in Syria has been raging for the past two years, much of the global outrage that we now see has only erupted with the recent reports about Bashar al Assad’s government attacking civilians with chemical weapons. Arguably, the past two long years of war has not provoked the same level of indignation as we are now seeing from world leaders and publics. Why is it only now, with the use of chemical weapons – and not the use of “conventional” bombs and guns – have the US and UK governments...
Cameron’s Respect for the House of Commons’ No Vote on Syria was a Good Day for Democracy
Jump to 1:13: It’s the best question asked during the GOP debates last year Were any other Americans rather awestruck when David Cameron announced himself bound by the the House of Commons’ vote against attacking Syria last month? Wow. I found that so impressive – a due process binding executive war-making. Very nice. I am so used to strutting American presidents insisting that they can use force pretty much as they wish. Somehow the AUMF permitted Iraq and the drone war, and then came Obama’s insufferably condescending and monarchical comment in his Syria speech that even though he didn’t...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Something From the New TV Season
Yep, it is that time of year as each network rolls out its new programs with the first cancellations already being announced. This year, there is one that is under the radar--a sitcom based on Aliens. Check it out: Ok. Just a youtube bit of genius. Enjoy your weekend.
Friday Morning Linkage
Human Rights Watch has a new report on the killing of 190 civilians in early August by members of five Islamist rebel groups: Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, Suquor al-Izz Congratulations to Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the Nobel Peace Prize. They won't have much time to celebrate given a mid-2014 timeline to destroy all of Syria's chemical weapons capabilities. Here's a link to this week's OPCW press conference on the latest from Syria with Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü and members of the Syria...