Just like any other medium, video games can serve pedagogical purposes.
Sid Meier’s Clash of Civilizations
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Robert Jervis
As many of our readers have likely already heard, Robert Jervis died yesterday. The field has lost a gentle intellectual giant. Unlike many of my friends from Columbia, Bob wasn't on my dissertation...
Tarak Barkawi
Professor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in military history but...
We Urgently Need to Support Girls’ Education in Afghanistan
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls....
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What Is . . . and Isn’t . . . a Norm?
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 alumna of BTG’s International Policy Summer Institute. During 2017-2018, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology fellow working in the Office of Food for Peace at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). We talk about norms a great deal in international...
Early lessons from a survey on bias in family formation in academia
The following is a guest post by Leah C. Windsor and Kerry F. Crawford. Windsor is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute for Intelligent Systems at The University of Memphis. Crawford is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at James Madison University. To take their survey, visit: https://tinyurl.com/drparentsurvey This is the first in the series on changing the field of international relations. #IRChange Academic families – especially dual-career spouses – with young children are struggling in more specific and remediable ways than we thought when we first...
Ranking Tenure Candidates? No Thanks
Sunday mornings are for tenure reviews. Huh? I am reading stuff to evaluate a scholar for whether he/she is worthy of tenure. This is a standard part of the tenure process--to have outside scholars read a bunch of a candidate's work and then indicate whether they have made a significant contribution and whether they are likely to continue to do so. As I have written elsewhere, this is a fair amount of work, almost always unpaid. So, I have gotten a bit cranky when I do it these days. Sunday mornings are for tenure reviews. Huh? I am reading stuff to...
Moscow in the Meddle
Between the burning Amazon and burning Siberia, Brexit clustercoitus and Hurricane Dorian, there is still some space in the tired news cycle for the tear gas in Hong Kong and broken limbs in Moscow protests. Elections to the local parliament in Moscow have proved unexpectedly difficult for the ruling vertical: by refusing to register oppositional candidates for made-up reasons, the election committee and the Mayor’s office drastically underestimated mobilisation capabilities of the opposition. Result: over a month and a half of “unsanctioned” protests in the city center, police brutality,...
Pompeo’s New Commission on Unalienable Rights Falls Short, But Represents a Real Opportunity
The following is a guest post by Dr. Ryan M. Welch. Dr. Welch is Assistant Professor at the University of Tampa who specializes in human rights institutions and is a former member of the Maricopa County Human Rights Committee. Recently, the State Department created a human rights commission called the Commission on Unalienable Rights (hereinafter: the Commission). Like an oil industry lobbyist heading the Department of Interior, a climate skeptic atop the EPA, and a charter school advocate running the public education department, most believe this another cynical instance of an institution...
Thoughts on making the most of APSA for the alt-ac attendee
Graduation Cap and Diploma on White with Soft Shadow. C/o Bluestocking, 2008 Uyen Le APSA is nearly upon us again, and I thought I should write something profession-related as I got back into blogging. My first thought was to make fun of annoying questions, but I already did that (six years ago...but still relevant). And there is a lot of advice floating around for grad students or others on the market. Instead, I thought I'd focus on an area where my experience is more unique: navigating academic conferences while working outside academia (or alt-ac*) and--in my case--trying to get back in....
The Enemy’s Gate is Down
How a shift in tactical orientation by activists opposing the border camps might make all the difference.
Using Pop Culture in the Classroom: Footloose FTW!
I love this tweet as it puts the usual dynamics on their head: Tip for students going off to college: study 80s/90s pop culture. Particularly Ferris Beuller, Princess Bride, Simpsons seasons 2-5. Your gen x/early millennial profs will try to connect with you through these, and will be confused/sad when you stare blankly at them. Not joking. — David Mimno (@dmimno) August 2, 2019 Each summer, profs are reminded how much younger the students are and then the onus is on them to update their references. This tweet nicely makes fun of profs by suggesting the reverse. As always, I have two...