Alongside research and teaching, most tenure-track jobs come with some expectation of service.
Strategic Service on the Tenure Track
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Episode 22: So a Deputy Foreign Minister and an Academic Realist Walk into a Bar…
In 2014, John Mearsheimer authored a Foreign Affairs article in which he blamed that year’s Ukrai…
In Memoriam: Jon Western
Back in the Duck of Minerva's heyday, Jon Western was one of its anchors. Indeed, it wasn't that long ago that we were talking about his returning. Jon said that he'd gained important perspective on...
Episode 21: Constructivists All the Way Down
Is Constructivism best understood as a scholarly disposition, a body of theory, or an intellectua…
More Featured Posts
When 70% is good enough
When I was a grad student, I had the privilege of student teaching with political theorist Eric MacGilvray. Eric was—and I’m sure still is—a brilliant teacher. He was always in motion, but in a way that felt deliberate. He often perched on an elevated windowsill while listening to students debate amongst themselves. He made even the most archaic and dense texts accessible. (The class was Classics of Social and Political Thought.) He also had a unique approach to grading. Rather than marking on a scale of 100, where 94 is an A, he introduced a seven-point scale. Actually, it was a ten-point...
Restraint for what purpose?
Restraint in US foreign policy is having a moment. That's a good thing. But I worry it's unclear whether restraint is a means or an end, and what that end would be. Without resolving this--preferably in favor of re-imagining a continued US leadership role in the world--current calls for restraint may do more harm than good. The popularity of restraint in US foreign policy should be making me happy. I went to college in the Bush years, and marched against the Iraq war. After graduating, I joined a group in DC trying to formulate a smart, progressive foreign policy vision. A few years later I...
The Russian Enigma
On an ice-cold winter evening I arrived in Moscow to untangle the riddle that is Russia. After reading two op-eds by Anne Applebaum and Bill Browder I knew what this country was about but I just wanted to see it for myself. The eyes of the border control guards reflected the thousand years of Russia’s repressive regime. I was half-expecting the KGB to arrest me there and then because four years ago I posted on Facebook that I didn’t like Vlad, but they let me through. My Moscow adventure had begun. The shadow of Stalin still looms large over this sprawling city. As soon as you approach the...
Russians Love Their Children Too
Sting said it best What kind of questions do you usually expect from a Town Hall meeting in the US? Healthcare? Climate change? Pensions? Schools? Roads? You would be surprised, but these are also the kind of questions journalists asked President Putin last Thursday at his annual presser (his 15th one, no less). Apart from the recurrent theme of the Great Patriotic War, it was your run of the mill, banal Q & A session; just instead of concerned citizens you have a room full of 1895 journalists from Russia and abroad with varying level of sanity and servility. The range was big...
The Same but Different: US vs UK Higher Education
Four years ago I accepted a job at a university in the UK. When I took the job I didn’t think a whole lot about how working in the UK might differ from my previous academic posts in the US. I’m an American, and though I have British friends who work at UK universities--one of whom warned me “not to be fooled by the fact that we speak the same language”--I was woefully underprepared for just how distinct the two higher education systems are. Brits and Americans do speak the same language, but there are significant differences in their use of terminology. It’s not just that we use different...
Chain-ganging in reverse? Gulf states and US hostility towards Iran
I had a piece in the Washington Post's "Monkeycage" over the weekend, which you can read here. I noted that many worry Saudi Arabia and the UAE will pull America into war with Iran. But it actually looks like they're the ones restraining us. The piece was inspired by the famous "chain-ganging" dynamic in IR scholarship, but there was little discussion of that as it was geared towards a broader audience, so I wanted to expand here. I suspect most readers of this site had to read Christensen and Snyder's "Chain gangs and passed bucks" at some point. In case you didn't, the argument is...
Lessons from Radicalization Narratives on Social Media
This is a guest post from Dr. Sybille Reinke de Buitrago, who is a Researcher and Project Manager of “VIDEOSTAR – Video-based Strategies Against Radicalization” at PolAk Nds, the Academy of Police Science and Criminology, Germany. Her research focuses on processes of identity, perception, emotions and discourse in security policy and international relations. With the multitude of ‘stuff’ anyone can say online, why does it matter what someone says? It depends. When it comes to extremists posting content, we should be concerned, because spreading hatred online can incite actual violence....
Agent. Foreign Agent
Warning! According to the law that the Russian parliament passed yesterday, this post might need to be prefaced with a disclaimer that the following text has been compiled by a foreign agent. An individual can be labeled as a “foreign agent” in Russia if they (1) distribute information, and (2) receive funds from sources outside Russia. I am ticking both boxes here, even as an academic working at a university, and the law intentionally left the “information spreading” extremely broad: you can literally post something on social media. It would be up for the Justice Ministry and the Foreign...