Professor Julie Kaarbo discusses Foreign Policy Analysis.
Episode 4: Julie Kaarbo
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Featured
Three Ways to Think about the IMF’s Insistence on Debt Relief for Greece
According to the NY Times, the IMF has refused to participate in any new bailout program for Greece unless Hellas is receiving debt relief. Specifically, says the IMF, this relief must come in one...
Institutional Aspects of the Iran Deal
I woke up this morning to read (a few hours behind most of you...one of the few downsides to living in the Pacific Northwest is living behind the news cycle!) about the finalizing of a nuclear deal...
Sexism in Political Science, part II: The Very Least One Can Do
Last night, I posted this about sexism in political science. It has gotten a pretty strong response getting 10x as many hits (so far) as my usual post, lots of retweets by female political...
More Featured Posts
Are Weapons Inspections about Information or Inconvenience?
Editor's note: this is a guest post by William Spaniel, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester.  See this previous Duck post describing some of his work, and this post at his own blog providing more information about the research discussed here. Spurred by a new International Organization article by Alexandre Debs and Nuno Monteiro (DM), the Duck of Minerva has recently hosted a debate on the cause of the Iraq War (see here, here, and here). To sum, DM argue that the United States’ imperfect knowledge of Iraq’s weapons programs led to a rational war. In contrast, speaking...
Monday Linkage
Rosa Brooks compares our drone wars to Egypt's crackdown. Context by Fred Kaplan on the drone era. Lovely Umayam on the perils of crowdsourcing. Podcast: NPR's Ian Masters and Columbia University's David Philips on the Syrian refugee crisis. Area 51 documents have finally been declassified. The documents suggesting that there was never anything there but a secret spy plane program. What this means for Wendt/Duval's argument I will leave to commenters. Two excellent new articles on war law compliance by political scientists: Dara Kay Cohen on why some but not all armed groups commit rape;...
Marketing in Everything: Economics Edition
Krugman writes:But neither I nor most economists are going to make the effort of puzzling through difficult writings unless we’re given some sort of proof of concept — a motivating example, a simple and effective summary, something to indicate that the effort will be worthwhile. Sorry, but I won’t commit to sitting through your two-hour movie if you can’t show me an interesting three-minute trailer.Indeed. Krugman concludes with the admonition that "nobody has to read what you write." I wish this were more generally understood. I've read articles in Political Analysis about things I don't...
In Defense of Networking
There's been a lot of discussion, here (1)(2) and elsewhere (3)(4) about the value of networking. Dan Drezner suggests that the best kind of networking is doing good research, and that there is a small professional benefit to networking, but not much. Eric Voten agrees, suggesting that networking is not going to lead to significant professional opportunities. Dan Nexon suggests that one not network at all, but talk to and meet people as an end in itself. While there are a lot of gems of advice in all of these posts (do good research, be professional, have fun, don't chase around "big names"...
Risk
The world would be a better place if more academic papers included this caption--in bright neon letters and all caps. (via Dani K Nedal, as XCKD long ceased to be on my regular reading list)
Jean Bethke Elshtain, 1941-2013
The New York Times recalls her as a post-9/11 public intellectual who served as an "intellectual beacon" and "guiding light for policymakers" during a tumultous political era. The Atlantic describes her as a uniquely non-secularist scholar, whose "greatest legacy" was her "serious intellectual commitment to including God in discussions of politics." At Crooked Timber, Corey Robin counters the notion that she was a "realist" and criticizes her support for Bush-era policies under the mantle of "just war theory." As I sifted through some of the official obituaries, it surprised me how few of...
Academic Conferences: From “Networking” to Forming and Nurturing Social Ties
I don't care much for APSA. Indeed, this year I am continuing my recent tradition of skipping it entirely. But it always occasions discussion in the political-science blogsphere. This year the focus of that discussion, at least as it pertains to conferencing as an activity, appears to be on "networking." Steve recently echoed the substantive part of Brian's post in recommending a focus on meeting younger scholars rather than pursuing brief meetings with "big names" in the field. He also suggests a variety of social and professional events as good venues to meet people. Dan Drezner advises...
The Other Dimensions of Inclusion (and Exclusion) in Political Science
Dan's post on his self-experiment in raising citations to female scholars has drawn a critical comment from someone who wonders about whether similar patterns exist with reference to minority scholars and scholars from outside North America. The issues of gender, race, and national (regional) origin are distinct, but if we're going to have a wide-ranging discussion about inclusion and exclusion in the field then we ought to address these issues squarely. Just to be clear about the parameters of this discussion: it seems clear to me that we need to discuss the recruitment, retention, and...