Voices calling for restraint in US foreign policy are getting louder. A bipartisan community has grown tired of the tired consensus on America's role in the world and--thanks partly to the excesses of the Trump Administration--has had some success in shifting policy...
The new deadline is January 11th, so nominate away!
While it is hard to do and particularly hard to do while starting out, the general conventional wisdom (and wise it is) is that one should try to have three pieces under review at most/all times. ...
In early September, the circulation of the now iconic picture of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian Kurdish boy who drowned along with his mother and brother in the attempt to cross the Aegean Sea,...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by David A. Lake. It is the 15th installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Lake's article (PDF). A response, authored by Phil Arena, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. The field of International Relations...
As I post this today, senior faculty in my department are voting on my tenure case. I don’t really know how to describe what I’m feeling at the moment. It’s a combination of zen-like calm that I’m finally at this juncture in my career and a feeling of total and utter panic at the small-but-ever-present chance that things could go wrong. The odd thing: it’s not that I’m oscillating between these two states -I feel both at the same time. In a very real way, I’m Schrödinger’s cat: although I can’t be both tenured and denied at this university - at this very moment - I’m both. How did it come...
This mashup is just delightful (only slightly NSFW) The true test of a nerd is whether they can spout Monty Python and the Holy Grail line for line. Well, this video makes the old movie look new again:
We have a pretty good literature on how presidents use and manipulate their information and propaganda advantages to move public opinion toward their positions on the use of force. Both bottom –up, rational public arguments and top-down elite cueing models look at the institutional advantages of the presidency such as the bully pulpit, privileged access to information transmitted though classified intelligence and diplomatic channels, forging special access to the media, and the benefit of a history of Congressional and public deference to presidential leadership. But, when and under what...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Janice Bially Mattern. It is the 15th installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's and Daniel Nexon's article (PDF). Their post appeared earlier today. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. Jackson and Nexon’s map of IR theory presents a different perspective on the field. The authors are...
It was perhaps appropriate that yesterday's tale of a young pundit's career unraveling due to falsely claimed PhD coincided with the first meeting of the Doctoral Research Seminar I am teaching. Elizabeth O'Bagy had given the impression that she had finished her dissertation, but apparently not so much. After tweeting about it, I got some push back--how big of a sin is this? Do academics have a role in gate-keeping/outing those who lie about their credentials? My answers: big in academia and hell, yeah. To clarify this, let's focus on what a PhD is. It is not a certificate that says you...
Editor's Note: This is a  post (mostly) by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. It is the 14th installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to PTJ's and Daniel Nexon's article (PDF). A response, authored by Janice Bially Mattern, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. To begin with the punchline: we feel that the state of international theory...
If you are like me, you have been transfixed by the unfolding story on Syria, the diplomatic gambit that has forestalled an imminent military strike. Alongside this important news has been the more picayune question of a Syria intervention advocate falsely claiming her academic credentials from my alma mater. Lost in the midst of all this Syria drama is the fact that the United States Men's National Team qualified for the World Cup. In my one vaguely nationalist refrain, we are going to Brazil! Read on about all of these things... It's an open question whether the Obama administration has...