Photo courtesy of the Negative Psychologist. When sharing unpopular findings, what obligations (if any) do scholars have when policymakers do not care to hear the message? This is a guest post by Tricia Olsen, associate professor of business ethics and legal...
A couple of years ago, Human Rights Watch launched a report arguing for a treaty ban on fully autonomous weapons, claiming military robots who target and kill human beings would violate...
Last December, on “Giving Tuesday,” I encouraged friends and family to send donations to three of my favorite charitable causes in lieu of birthday presents: low-income housing, domestic violence,...
At War on the Rocks, Mieke Eoyong intervenes in the Sanders-Clinton foreign-policy debate. Although the case made for Sanders' foreign policy by those she critiques—including Sean Kay—is much...
Registration is now open for the two ISA Working Groups scheduled for ISA Toronto. I am coordinating one of them with my colleague Kavita Khory on Global Trends in War, Conflict and Political Violence. The Working Group is sponsored by the International Security Studies Section. Here's a brief description: The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. Over the past century, we have witnessed episodes of extreme interstate and intrastate violence as well as a more recent period of relative stability. This working group will bring together a group of scholars from...
As I’m sure all astute Duck readers are aware, today marks a critical day in the US House and Senate – if no deal is struck today on a spending bill, the US government will shut down at one minute after midnight on Tuesday morning. The issue at the heart of the controversy: a series of amendments to the spending bill that concern the Affordable Care Act (so-called “Obamacare”). In general, House Republicans are in favor of the amendments; Senate Democrats are against the amendments. So, both sides are holding firm to their stance on the amendments in hopes that the other side caves in...
Gunmen killed scores of students in their sleep at Yobe State College of Agriculture in Nigeria early Sunday morning. via Adam Jones on FB, it is interesting to note this massacre was reportedly sex-selective, with only young males targeted - what Jones has referred to elsewhere as 'gendercidal'. The NYTimes' Sunday expose on accidental guns deaths and children is a sickening, horrifying read sure to galvanize attention but is almost too sweeping to grasp. Two key points almost hidden among the anecdotes of gross parental neglect in leaving guns lying around for children to shoot each other...
A story in the New York Times this morning suggests that the National Security Agency has been analyzing our social networks through email and phone call records, apparently accomplishing “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata” of American citizens and foreign citizens alike. This network analysis uses not only contact data but GPS tracking to understand not only how we relate but how we move in relationship to each other. From the description in the article, the methods that the NSA uses seem to be very similar to those that political science is using, in...
Former Duck guest blogger Betcy Jose has published an excellent Foreign Affairs Snapshot pointing out the irony of a robust norm enforcement operation in Syria to protect the chemical weapons taboo, while perversely ignoring, even permitting, the violation of a far more foundational norm: the norm of civilian immunity. The whole piece is great but I especially liked the "puzzle" paragraph: Today, civilian immunity arguably ranks among the most important norms that the global community wants to protect. And that is what makes discussions about Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons so...
A little late Friday morning reading: Moving toward a Syrian Tribunal? Several former tribunal prosecutors will introduce their draft resolution on October 3 calling for one. Leslie Vinjamuri explains why she thinks the UNSC is wise not to refer Syria to the ICC. Research from our friends at Political Violence at a Glance making more news. Speaking of PV@ataGlance, Joe Young has a good piece on al-Shabab. More baby steps in the effort to get control of the global small arms trade. Things are not going well in Iraq -- street battles between current and former terrorist militias. And,...
Originally circulating as "Every Sci-Fi Starship Ever In One Mind-Blowing Comparison Chart," there are some pretty important gaps in this picture, including (allegedly) no Serenity and nothing from Spaceballs. Still, a noble endeavor. If you haven't already seen them comments at Kotaku are fun to read.
I was transfixed this week by the week's events in Kenya, the attacks by Al-Shabaab on the Westgate shopping center that resulted in the deaths of at least 60 people. With friends just a stone's throw away from that mall, it was hard to turn away from that unfolding set of events. So, this week, to give you some context, I've linked a number of stories that try to explain how the attack could have happened, why al-Shabaab appears intent on this kind of action, and what this means for security in East Africa. At the same time as we have witnessed this horrific tragedy, there appears a...