The Norm Concept This post, part of the Bridging the Gap channel at the Duck, comes from Michelle Jurkovich, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a 2019-2020 Public Engagement Fellow with Bridging the Gap and an...
I have fallen behind in my Friday Nerd Blogging contributions, so I have this belated Halloween video:
There is all kinds of advice out there on how to write and finish a book. We are frequently advised to 'Write everyday', 'write early in the morning,' 'workshop and present your work,' among other...
This is a guest post by Wendy Wong, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Toronto, Director of the Trudeau Center for Peace, Conflict and Justice, and author of Internal Affairs:...
Daryl Morini, an IR PhD candidate at the University of Queensland whom I know, has put together an interesting global survey for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations. It looks pretty thorough and might make a pretty interesting student couter-point to TRIP. Eventually the goal is an article on our students’ attitudes toward the discipline; here is the full write-up of the project at e-IR. So far as I know, nothing like this has been done before (please comment if that is incorrect), so this strikes me as the interesting sort of student work we should support....
In between making organic cupcakes for my daughters’ school, completing a grant application, tending my organic vegetables, and finishing an R&R for a journal, I came across this little gem of a working paper (thanks to Freakonomics Blog).[1] This new research shows the following: "Couples where the wife earns more than the husband are less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. Finally, based on time use surveys, the gender gap in non-market work is larger if the wife earns more than the husband" (abstract). So, in a nutshell, women who earn more than their...
Via a Facebook friend, an analysis of the sound and fury surrounding MOOCs by Aaron Bady: Where this urgency comes from, however, might be less important than what it does to our sense of temporality, how experience and talk about the way we we are, right now, in “the MOOC moment.” In the MOOC moment, it seems to me, it’s already too late, always already too late. The world not only will change, but it has changed. In this sense, it’s isn’t simply that “MOOCs are the future,” or online education ischanging how we teach,” in the present tense. Those kinds of platitudes are chokingly [sic]...
The International Ethics section of the International Studies Association announces its annual book award competition for 2014. The award is given every year at the International Ethics section business meeting at the ISA Convention. Next year, the convention is in Toronto, March 26-29. The prize will be an award of $200 along with a plaque to honor the author’s work. Books eligible for the award must fall into the broadly defined category of international ethics. This includes, but is not limited to, books on international descriptive ethics, international normative ethics, metaethics,...
Oh Noes!!! Image credit: Tyrone Siu/Reuters Tracking vaccine scares in Africa. Edward Hugh on Abenomics. Paul Krugman's New York Review of Books essay on austerity features Mark Blyth's Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (via). Some additional reflections on Kenneth Waltz and his ideas from Rajesh Rajagopalan, Robert Farley, and Michael Desch. Mark Kersten slams the ICC's website. Kelly Strøm: "How Syria Ruined Marc Lynch's Spring." Tom Pepinsky considers the possibility of an "authoritarian data advantage." Jay Ulfelder does TEDx. Footnoting Florida Polytechnic University's...
One of the traditional responsibilities of sane conservative parties is to write-out of respectability and legitimacy the scary, nut-job right-wing fringe. There can’t be a ‘no-enemies-on-the-right’ strategy, or you wind up with anti-Semites, racists, and black-helicopter guys grabbing all the media attention and delegitimizing wider conservative goals. In the US, Bill Buckley explicitly intended the National Review to screen out the John Birch Society and the American Mercury. In Germany, the CDU/CSU keeps the nationalist/neo-Nazi fringe at bay. (I worked for both GOP and CSU legislators in...
I've been deficient in serving your delicious, piping-hot links. I apologize. And to make matters worse, I have a very small selection of links today. But you can take solace in knowing that these are hand-crafted, artisanal links--the type of linkage that would make Henry Kissinger envious. The worst restaurant in America. Yes, this is a link to an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, but you'll find it gripping. Much like the owners of Amy's Baking Company in the Kitchen Nightmares episode above, is upset with its rankings. The PRC is trying to get the World Bank to cease ranking countries by...
Ari Kohen on the value of "edutainment": Finally, and most importantly, is the central claim that the test of education is whether or not it’s entertaining. Wales asks, “why wouldn’t you have the most entertaining professor, the one with the proven track record of getting knowledge into people’s heads?” Is there evidence that the most entertaining lecture is the one that gets “knowledge into people’s heads”? Again, I’m not suggesting that a boring lecture is going to do the trick, but I’m arguing that entertaining students doesn’t necessarily equate with teaching them something. When I...