Robert Kelly used to blog here before he made the big-time on the BBC, so here's a salute via Friday nerd-blogging. BEAUTIFUL pic.twitter.com/EQo7JJJ8gW — Lindsey B (@lindseybieda) March 17, 2017
Voting closes tomorrow at 5pm EST for this year's OAIS Blogging Awards. If you haven't already done so, now is the time to cast your ballot. You can review the nominees and get more information...
My students and I have just read Emilie Hafner-Burton's grand treatise on the human rights regime, Making Human Rights a Reality. Following her earlier empirical studies, this is a sweeping...
This piece has been making waves in the academic world (for a much better set of recommendations, see this piece). It gets much attention because it both identifies a real problem and then suggests...
Sarah Duff (who has contributed to this blog before) had a very interesting piece in the UK Guardian this week on the hurdles scholars in developing countries have to face in order to engage with scholars in the developed world. Rather than focusing on whether or not the visa system is fair, she describes exactly what she must do in order to present a paper in “the West” how this impacts on the development of her research:I describe the expensive, time-consuming, and often quite invasive procedure of applying for a visa to explain why they influence my work. Because my American visa is valid...
I can't resist sharing this wonderful news clip from Malawi. I challenge Duck readers to have fun with this: What might the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movements learn from Malawi?Malawi protests scheduled for January 15, Chilembwe Day12 January 2012tags: chilembwe day, malawi, protestby dadakimThe following call to protest in Malawi on January 15 (Chilembwe Day) was sent as an email, and has been reported on by opposition online news agency Nyasa Times.***********************CONCERNED CITIZENS OF MALAWI — PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 11 JANUARY 2012TIME FOR ACTION AGAINST ECONOMIC...
It's bad form to criticize otherdisciplines' journals based solelyon titles, but Annals of Tourism Research? This is the sort of thing libraries spend their budgets on?Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) is trying to end taxpayer access to publicly-funded research. The article is worth reading, not least because it is the only time that you'll ever see the term "powerful publishing cartels" in this age of disruptive new-media innovation.And yet the academic publishing market really is different, as one UC-Berkeley professor argued last year. When Nature tried to extort a 400% subscription...
Writing in Foreign Policy, Paul Pillar makes the case that most so-called "intelligence failures" stem from bad leadership rather than problems with the US intelligence community. He touches upon a number of cases, but Iraq looms large:Had Bush read the intelligence community's report, he would have seen his administration's case for invasion stood on its head. The intelligence officials concluded that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction against the United States or give them to terrorists -- unless the United States invaded Iraq and tried to overthrow his regime. The...
If you are running for the nomination of the Republican Party for President, there are a fewindispensables – you have to hate welfare recipients, oppose gay marriage, and have fired a gun at an animal at some point. (But apparently you no longer have to support a robust military presence overseas. Or have fired a gun against another person in a foreign war. That has not been a requirement since Eisenhower.) But it seems there is another sine qua non. If you are a man, you need a blond wife. Here are pictures of the wives of all the major contenders for the Republican nomination for...
The Pentagon is remarkable for its ability to contrive reasons to justify its bloated budgets. In recent years, it and the gaggle of contractors, analysts, and journalists that support it have found military-security risks in everything from “hot zone" diseases to global warming. But with looming budget cuts, the defense establishment is being forced to downsize, albeit modestly. To protect itself, it has now taken to fear-mongering. Some of this is the usual: the supposedly dire threats we face abroad – e.g., from distant, 10th rate military powers like Iran or Pakistan or al-Qaeda, or...
Last year I mentioned an editorial in the Washington Post decrying the District's decision--prodded by a small number of wealthy Georgetown residents--to force the University to meet unrealistic targets. A refresher:A recommendation by the city’s office of planning would require the university to provide housing for 100 percent of its undergraduate students by 2016; failure to do so would force cuts in enrollment starting in 2015. Georgetown houses a higher percentage (84 percent) of undergraduates on its campus than most of the other universities in the city. Not only is it unfair to hold...
The twitter-verse, or at least, one of the corners I follow, had heaps of tweets dedicated to the rollout of the US defense review, with Obama playing a starring role. Apparently, Obama briefing at the Pentagon is a new thing. Anyhow, it raised all kinds of questions, so I thought I would answer them all here. Yes, all of them. Ok, some of them.Q: Is the review really a review of what the US wants to do, or is it a gloss over the requirements imposed by the fiscal crisis?A: Yes, it is a gloss, but it is more significant than that. In the good old days, Grand Strategy meant the overall...