Anne Harrington and Jacqueline (Jill) Hazelton take center stage in the inaugural G&T episode.
Duck Podcast G&T series episode 1: Power, realism, and the politics of IR Academia
read more
Featured
Academia isn’t Baseball
This is a guest post by both Nexon and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. Standard disclaimers apply. Cullen Hendrix's guest post is a must read for anyone interested in citation metrics and...
Foreign Policy and the First GOP Debate
So, with the conclusion of last night's first GOP debate, it's worth a look back at the foreign policy claims made by the candidates for the Republican nomination for president. The focus was, as...
The Duck-Cat of Minerva
I want readers to know that I would never, ever link to a Buzzfeed video. Unless, of course, the video included footage of Ifrit. He receives about three seconds of fame — starting at about a minute...
More Featured Posts
Blogging the syllabus, international security edition: what is security?
With all of the focus on APSA, there’s been little discussion of another Labor Day ritual—the Revising of the Syllabus. In truth, I should have begun this ritual a few weeks ago. Now that the panic dreams have kicked in—you know, the ones where you show up to class on the first day without a syllabus and thus lose all authority over your students for the rest of the semester…you do get those too, right?—I know I must take action. My first task is to revise my introductory-level course on security studies and, luckily, it’s in pretty good shape, thanks to some major overhauls I did over the...
Networking at Conferences: Not Just for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by David Lake, who is the Jerri-Ann and Gary E. Jacobs Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. I want to weigh in on “networking at conferences” debate here on the Duck (and elsewhere), some of which has been lost in subsequent controversy. I agree with the prior posts by Saideman, Nexon, Sjoberg, and others, available here, that networking is less important than good research, and that networking among peers is far more valuable than networking with senior scholars. The most...
The Syrian Chemical Attack: Things Fall Apart, the Centre Cannot Hold
The news out of the Damascus suburbs this morning is highly disturbing and, if the reports are confirmed that this was a chemical attack, no doubt will mark a turning point in the conflict. Dan is somewhat skeptical that it will change the intervention calculus. I disagree. For the better part of the past two years, the Obama administration has pursued to a strategy of conflict management and containment. It doesn't look like that policy has worked. Today's events appear to have been a major chemical attack with a large loss of civilian life. The raw and devastating images will alter the...
Social Media Before Conference Networking
This is a guest post by Brent Sasley. Sasley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He blogs at Mideast Matrix and Open Zion. Follow him on Twitter. The political science/IR blogosphere has been engaged in an interesting discussion in recent days: whether and how junior scholars should network at academic conferences (just follow the links from this piece to get them all or scroll down through Duck of Minerva’s main page). My own two cents is that it depends on the conference, on the specific sub-field, and on the individual...
Will this be the Straw that Break the Back of Non-Intervention in Syria?
There are gruesome reports out of Syria today of a chemical weapons attack in a suburb of Damascus. If they are accurate, the chemical weapons inflicted mass civilian causalities. As David Kenner reports at Foreign Policy: The information coming out of the Ghouta region, where the rebels enjoy significant support, is still unconfirmed by independent observers. But videos allegedly taken Wednesday in the area showed Syrians lying on the floor gasping for breath, medics struggling to save infants, and rows of bodies of those who had reportedly died in the attack (warning: the footage above is...
Wednesday Linkage
While the IR blogosphere navel-gazes, history marches on: Media is reporting a massive civilian casualties from a chemical weapons attack in Syria. The UN is holding an emergency meeting. More from Reuters. Great coverage w/ updates at NuclearDiner. In sharp contrast, an elementary school clerk in Georgia prevented a school massacre by deploying empathy, respectful language and an appeal to a gunman's human dignity. Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison yesterday for his leaking of classified documents. Joshua Foust and Scott Lemieux discuss. Pervez Musharraf has been indicted...
Brian’s Departure and the Duck
I expect that our readers have seen Brian's public letter of resignation, as well as Charli's personal take on all this and Steve's discussion of the perils and rewards of blogging. This is a choice that Brian made on his own recognizance, one that he announced to the other permanent contributors in an email exchange. Many of the emails that I've received since Thursday have expressed some combination of puzzlement, anger, dismay, and unhappiness at the absence of a collective statement from the Duck of Minerva. The general argument is that a blog of the Duck of Minerva's "stature" and...
Learning the Wrong Lessons? Who Should Blog?
In the past week, there has been a heap of controversy here over a post that many folks found to be offensive. In reaction, the blogger is ceasing to blog, Charli discuss the challenges of blogging, and others still are drawing lessons, such as Christopher Zorn who posted on his FB page "the vast majority of academic political scientists are just not cut out to be bloggers, and probably shouldn't do so." My reaction to this is: blogger is a label that describes a whole lot of activity, so saying people should not blog might mean that they should not write on the internet. Or it might mean...