This post in the Bridging the Gap series come from Sara Plana and Rachel Tecott, doctoral candidates in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Sara is also an alumna of BtG's New Era Workshop.) They are the founders of the...
One of the constant refrains one will hear in civil-military relations is that there is a gap between the civilians and the military--a deep, wide gap in values, perceptions and so on. Well, here...
This summer may be the most Marvelous yet with Captain America 2, Spider-Man 2, X-Men Days of Future Past (otherwise X-Men First Class 2) and Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, not all are by Marvel...
I just finished my cyber security book, provisionally titled Cyber Hype versus Cyber Reality. The feeling of loss has set in. I don’t know what to do with myself now, I am sleeping more than...
It was sort of sad watching conservatives play the same game that we did in 2004. Poll aggregation + 1; bubblethought -15.
Amazing how the Simpsons is still pretty funny after 25 years… In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I’d list the reasons why I voted the way I did. I know conservative media regularly accuse professors of politicizing the classroom, but an honest discussion of why one chooses the way one did can also be useful exercise of citizenship. (See Drezner for an example of what I was thinking of.) So with that goal, not demagoguery, in mind, here we go: 1. The Tea Party Scares Me This is easily the most important reason for me. Regular readers of my own blog will know that I vote in...
US citizens who haven't voted early should exercise axiological rationality and cast their ballots. If you live in Maryland, please consider voting "yes" on Question 6. John Sides takes umbrage at Michael Gerson's attacks on political science. If you squint hard enough at Gerson's arguments then his criticisms of qualitative-content analysis might make sense. Regardless, it seems to me that Gerson has it backwards: more mathematical and statistical literacy would likely reduce (not increase) the amount of vacuous horse-race prognostication and therefore enhance media coverage of substance....
Electoral Outcomes For obvious reasons, I'm much less confident of my predictions in 2012 than in 2008. I think there's a good chance that Florida, Colorado, and Virginia might go the other way. North Carolina and New Hampshire could as well. Regardless, it looks pretty likely that Obama is going to win re-election. I'm betting the hispanic vote pushes Obama over the top in Nevada (uncontroversial) and Colorado (more controversial); that his lead in Ohio is large enough not to be negatively impacted by long waits at urban polling stations; and that he runs up sufficient margins in Northern...
My good friend and awesome protest/network scholar Michael Heaney at the University of Michigan has released a documentary film, THE ACTIVISTS: WAR, PEACE, AND POLITICS IN THE STREETS. The film is with Melody Weinstein and Marco Roldán and, in addition to the central message of the film, shows the power of releasing academic work in a format that can reach a larger audience. For a limited time, Michael's film is available for free viewing (just viewing - not downloading) here.
Laleh Khalili's Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford, 2012) looks fascinating. An interesting piece by Karen Burhnam (at SF Signal) on what the discovery of a rocky planet around Alpha Centauri means for human deep-space exploration. Alexandra Gheciu at CIPSBlog on intervention in Mali. Suparna Chaudhry takes a retrospective look at the the Sino-Indian war of 1962. John Holbo discusses the "Year of the MOOC" (that's "Massive Open Online Courses"). Spencer Ackerman looks at the current state of bureaucratic CYA and other confusions surrounding the US response...
The first posting of some of the audio from this weekend's ISA-Northeast conference is up over on my syndication site. This one is from a panel called "Whither Constructivism?" featuring Nick Onuf, Mike Barnett, and me, chaired by Sammy Barkin. I'll get the audio from the methodology workshop up in the next couple of days, and Dan has the audio from our "science fiction and IR pedagogy" panel because my recorder crapped out and didn't record it properly. The comments I make here are going to form the foundation of something I hope to write and post shortly, defending my position that sharp...
On Interstate 71, south of Columbus; Ohio’s most famous sign So it’s election time, which means CNN, etc. will be filled with pundits with only the vaguest credentials – never any PhDs - telling you why the outcome inevitably had to be such-and-such. (Retrodiction is so insufferably smug.) And they’ll explain it as if these tired clichés are real insights and not the same flim-flam they pedal every November. So let me predict the future: here are the five worst clichés you’ll hear Tuesday – the lamest, most recycled, simplistic, and least analytically useful (because they’re so...