Professor Julie Kaarbo (U. of Edinburgh) discusses role theory, the relationship between FPA and IR theory, and a new project she is calling Breaking Bad. As always thanks go to Steve Dancz (https://stevedancz.com) for our theme music.
As a new Duck, who (like Cai & Tom) took a while to consider what to blog about, I finally decided - long-winded academic that I am - to write a series of posts on the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag...
This is a guest post from Mira Sucharov, an  Associate Professor at Carleton University. Particularly in areas of contested politics — controversial policy issues, protracted conflict, clashing...
I'm just testing a new plugin so that posts automatically feed to our Facebook page if that's where you get your news. Don't mind me!
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...
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...
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...
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...
Sometime in my first year of blogging, I read on the Internets that President Mugabe's troops had burned a six-year-old alive in front of his parents. I was horrified, it was late, I was tired and already pissed off at something completely unrelated, and I foolishly fired off a blog post provocatively entitled "Why Not Assassinate Mugabe?" The point of the post, actually, was that there are a whole bunch of really good reasons why the anti-assassination norm exists and holds in such cases. But naturally no one paid any attention to that, and by the time I woke up I had been called out for...
I have decided, following the controversy surrounding my post on networking, to remove myself as one of the permanent contributors to the Duck of Minerva. Through poorly chosen and ill-considered language and images, I made light of women’s challenges both in their academic and in their daily lives, for which I am deeply sorry. I don’t want to get in the way of other people doing good work on important topics on the site. In the future, I will diligently and sincerely work towards educating myself on the unique experiences of women in academia and pass those lessons on to others. I will...
It's been a big week for football (that is, soccer to all you U.S. readers). The raffle for 2014 World Cup tickets in Brazil started today ($90 is the starting price for first round games). Brazil had a dry run of hosting the Confederations Cup soccer tourney over the summer, which went great, aside from the mass protests by Brazilians upset about corruption and state incompetence that challenged the country's leadership. In other news, the British Premier League started this week (now on NBC instead of FoxSoccer, with hilarious Jason Sudeikis spoof of Americans' lack of football knowledge...
A new tumblr: "Everyday Power and Privilege in IR." David Axe lambasts the F-35. Cheryl Rofer recalls her trip to Semipalatinsk. A map of confirmed US-backed coups. Seth Masket holds up the 'tweets predict congressional winners' paper as an example of how scholars should not publicize their research. David Herter announces the completion of volume one of his new trilogy. His first book, Ceres Storm, is the best science-fiction novel that you've likely never read, and I'd rank it in the very top-tier of SF books. A year ago I recorded an interview with him, which still hasn't aired. I promise...