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
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Featured
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...
PETA’s Shock Tactics: Irresponsible Advocacy or Strategy and Positioning?
[As two fellow NGO researchers, Wendy and Maryam are going to collaborate on some posts to provide contrasting views on hot-button issues related to NGOs. Think of us as the Siskel and Ebert of NGOs...
#BringBackOurGirls, Feminist Solidarity and Intervention – Part One
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...
More Featured Posts
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...
I Wear My Egg In Solidarity: Thoughts on the Perils of Academic Blogging
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...
Dear Readers
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...
Are you ready for some football?
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...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
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...
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...