This is a guest post by Betcy Jose and Alessa Sänger. Jose is currently a Fellow in the Cluster of Excellence: Formation of Normative Orders at Goethe University. Sänger is pursuing a Master Degree in Curatorial Studies at Goethe Universität and Städelschule and is a...
This is a guest post by Matthew Bolton, Assistant professor of political science at Pace University and author of Foreign Aid and Landmine Clearance. He blogs at Political Minefields. Imagine never...
Just over a week ago – two days before the discovery of the bodies of the three abducted Israeli teenagers and four days before the abduction and revenge killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir -- I sat in...
Over the July 4th weekend, UT System Chancellor Cigarroa demanded that UT President Bill Powers resign or be fired by July 10th. Bill Powers refused but offered a timetable to step-down. Supporters...
Here is part one of this post. The following will make more sense if you start there. I noted that I am participating, today in Seoul (attend if you can), in a USC-CSIS project on Korean unification. This is the final ‘phase’ of their Korea Project on unification. I thought I would post my thoughts on the previous USC-CSIS Korea report (available here) which provided all sorts of suggestions for reconstruction. It’s useful reading if your area is East Asia or Korea, but I actually disagree with a fair number of the analogies of NK to Iraq and Afghanistan. I think Germany is a better model...
In honor of the drum major for peace, here's your (rather abbreviated) MLK Holiday edition of Monday morning linkage: Some reactions to Zero Dark Thirty are, well ... rather predictable... since Islamophobia has become the tolerated form of bigotry in the West and particularly in 'Merica. Novelist, Teju Cole, writes Seven [Really, Really] Short Stories about Drones on Twitter. Zack Beauchamp doesn't really get it.  Not boring and nuanced enough.  FFS it's a series of tweets! .... By the way don't tell him about Daisy Rockwell's Little Book of Terror. Hamid Dabashi asks "Can Non-Europeans...
Bruce Whitehouse provides a roundup of developments in Mali. John Owen on US decline. He claims that he thought he was doing an interview for a dissident magazine, not a "regime-approved" publication. Yeah, right. We all know John's in the tank for the Mullahs. Jay Ulfelder argues that the Libyan intervention is not responsible for core events in Mali. China's military on the rise. Peter Henne discusses the relationship between religion and suicide bombings. Xavier Marquez: "the deification of Hugo Chávez." Jeffrey Lewis examines "confused" accounts of North Korea's missiles. Jeffrey...
The University of Southern California Korean Studies Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are running a joint Korea Project: Planning for the Long Term (pic to the left). CSIS will hold the last of three conferences in this project at the Asan Institute on January 21st next week. If you are in Seoul, you should go. The agenda looks pretty good. (Contact the Asan Institute.) I’d like to thank USC and CSIS for soliciting my participation.. The January 21 conference is actually the last meeting of the Project. The first meeting asked Korea area experts to look at...
The eighteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Stefano Guzzini of the Danish Institute for International Studies and Uppsala University . Professor Guzzini discusses, among other things his intellectual and educational background, his important work on power in international affairs, realism, and geopolitics. This podcast is a bit more "bare bones" than usual. I didn't put in introductory remarks; I have not produced an m4a version at this time. The file located here is the mp3 version. Explanation: I am bit pressed for time right now. I should reiterate important change...
Ok, you went to Oberlin or maybe Swarthmore or Bowdoin or Haverford or Macalester. It was your first experience away from home -- your first real intellectual stimulation, the drugs, the sex -- it was a total mind blowing experience. You had dinner at a professor’s house and then stayed late into the night discussing the Russian Revolution. You experimented with Marxism, liberation theology, or maybe even poetry. From the moment you left college, you knew you would get your Ph.D. and become a liberal arts college professor. Sorry to burst the bubble, but let me be blunt here. You can’t get...
New term alert: France is worried that Mali and the region is turning into "Afrighanistan." If you didn't see this on Wednesday, go back and read Adrienne LeBas's piece here on Duck. Some evidence of Malian support for intervention? Mohammed Adow at Al Jazeera's Africa blog also thinks so. Gregory Mann believes the intervention was necessary and is widely supported, but worries about the new dangers and dynamics it has created. Alex Thurston isn't so sure. Conn Hallinan looks back to the link with NATO's Libya intervention. Tobias Koeph and JonTemin ask the question -- what next? Steve Walt...
Brazilian transexual, feminist anger, the 'arrival' of the trans lobby, and a journalist leaving twitter. Did you get it all this week? In case you didn't, here's the summary (without commentary/opinion for now) with all the links you need: A few days ago Suzanne Moore (a journalist for the Guardian) wrote a piece on 'the power of female anger'. In this otherwise unremarkable post, one line has sparked controversy: We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual. The comment sparked a Twitter...