Maybe the problem isn’t that scholars don’t know how to speak to U.S. foreign-policy makers, but rather that U.S foreign-policy makers don’t know how to engage with scholarship?
Bridging the Gap to Nowhere?
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Political-Science Lab Leaks: a Symposium
Today we're kicking off a new symposium on Paul Musgrave's Foreign Policy article, "Political Science Has Its Own Lab Leaks." In it, Musgrave likens academic disciplines to labs; academic theories...
Will Afghanistan Hurt U.S. Credibility?
What we know about reputation and credibility doesn’t track with the claims of doomsayers. But it also doesn’t accord with those who argue that there’s “nothing to see here.”
The Politics of “Defeat”
We’re in the middle of a political struggle to define “defeat” in Afghanistan. What does that mean?
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We are Groot
Today is President Putin’s inauguration day and even Avengers couldn’t stop it, as evidenced by the arrested raccoon in the center of Moscow on Saturday during the unsanctioned rally ““He's No Tsar to Us.” For Russia watchers, the Saturday protests probably created a sense of déjà vu of May 2012 when much larger protests erupted in Moscow and around Russia. They displayed a high degree of social mobilization around the fair elections narrative, but the protesters paid a high price for it: over 30 were criminally charged and 17 were sentenced to several years in prison, some fled the country....
Rumor, Social Media, and the Question of Knowledge
Some time ago, Charli reviewed an article I published in International Organization. In that review, Charli asked how do we know what we ‘know’ about the nature of external states. At the time, I thought the question an important one. In only a few years, the question has gone from important to absolutely critical. As the politics surrounding Trump’s election and administration, including the now pervasive claim of ‘fake news’ demonstrate, knowledge—and faith therein—is under strain. While knowledge has never been as objective or robust as most international relations (IR) scholars assume,...
What is Happening to the Non-Intervention Norm?
This is a guest post by Betcy Jose, Assistant Professor at University of Colorado-Denver and author of Norm Contestation: Insights into Non-Conformity with Armed Conflict Norms. Follow her on Twitter. After the recent strikes in Syria, Germany’s Angela Merkel stated the intervention was, “necessary and appropriate, to ensure the effectiveness of the international ban of chemical weapons use and to warn the Syrian regime of further violations.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked, “A lack of accountability emboldens those who would use such weapons by providing them with the...
Why Trump Won
In the academic community, the equivalent to ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ is ‘peer-review or it doesn’t count’. That’s why I decided to wait until I get some validation on the hypothesis about the Trump win that I was working on. The full paper is coming out in International Relations journal and this a (relatively) short teaser. Don’t worry, there is a Russian angle, just probably not the one you would expect. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, considerable blame was passed around by pundits and politicians alike, wondering how the Republican nominee managed to...
Does the U.S. Have a North Korea Strategy?
A Presidential summit in May is not a high risk / high reward scenario. It is Russian roulette. Last November the media poked fun when inclement weather kept Trump from getting his opportunity to stare down the enemy at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. While Trump was reportedly frustrated with being denied this photo-op, it is regrettable for us all that he never made it. Despite the pageantry that comes with these visits, I know from experience that there is something visceral about standing at the world’s most heavily militarized border. There is a certain...
Academic (S)mothering
As a new mother of a baby boy I am enjoying a slightly different kind of golden shower than Donald Trump. So, between the 3 AM feeding and 4 AM diaper change I was scrolling through Twitter and stumbled on news about the Stanford white sausage fest that somehow qualified as a conference on applied history. Niall Ferguson managed to organize a conference and not feature a single woman or person of color. Let me walk you through some thoughts about why there aren’t more women in (political) science. I should note right away I am speaking from a place of relative (white) privilege. I do not...
Heroes Aren’t Born, They’re Made.
This is a guest post by Ari Kohen, Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of Untangling Heroism. Follow him on Twitter here. As someone who researches heroism, I can say without a second’s hesitation that President Trump absolutely would not have rushed into an active shooter situation in a high school and neither would 99% of the people to whom he made the comment on Monday. No chance. I’m not saying this because I think Trump is a coward and I’m not saying it to get in another dig at him. I’m saying this because the vast, vast, vast...
A solid investment if you know what you’re getting: Why continued support for UN peacekeeping is good policy for the US
The following is a guest post by Jay Benson and Eric Keels. Jay Benson is a Researcher at One Earth Future (OEF), with research focusing on issues of peacekeeping, civilian protection and intrastate conflict. Eric Keels is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Global Security at the Howard H. Baker Center and a Contractor with the OEF Research. His research focuses on international conflict management and democracy in post-war countries. During the first year of the Trump administration, the United States government has initiated numerous changes to the United States’ foreign policy. Since...