Amidst all the political drama this week, one could be forgiven for not noting the 25th anniversary of the Chapultepec Peace Agreement. Chapultepec was the agreement that brought a negotiated end to El Salvador’s civil war, a 12-year conflict between a repressive...
Dear Kansas Board of Regents, Greetings. You probably don’t know me but I’ve been a long-time user of your services. I started my college career taking dual-credit courses at Pratt Community...
I might have to re-think this whole life choice. Tenure is supposed to mean more than just job security--that it is about academic freedom. To teach and research in ways that may not always be...
There's a Slate article titled "The End of the College Essay" circulating in various Facebook and Twitter circles critical of assigning long essays to undergraduates. The gist of the complaint...
The drone and the cyborg were born near the dawn of the nuclear age (i.e. the Vergeltungswaffen and the Kamikaze), and appeared in several previous conflicts, but they did not simultaneously reshape the dynamics of war until after 2001.The armed drone represents a displaced subjectivity that eludes the laws of war and Eurocentric/ anthropocentric notions of sovereignty. The soldier operating the drone spies, hunts, and kills from thousands of miles away; s/he murders combatants and non-combatants without taking any risk or responsibility. The drone violates the sovereign territory of foreign...
Later this week, I will be participating in a roundtable discussion with my esteemed colleagues Juan Cole, Manan Ahmed, Joshua Foust and Madiha Tahir on "The Blogs of War: The Analytical Terrain of the Af-Pak Blogosphere" at the annual conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.For my contribution to this discussion, I have been scouring blogs from US/ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan. (I ignored the glossier blogs which are mainly exercises in official public relations and propaganda). Since I am up to my eyeballs reading blogs posts, I thought I would share a few...
$250 million = the amount spent just by the US in FY2010 to counter narcotics in Afghanistan$100 million = the amount earned annually by the Taliban from narcotics trafficking304,000 acres = the number of acres devoted to opium in 2009304,000 acres = the number of acres devoted to opium in 2010$64 per Kg = the price of opium in 2009$169 per Kg = the price of opium in 2010Total production of opium did decline, but mainly because of a disease damaging the poppy crop. Â The spike in prices makes it likely that the number of acres devoted to the crop will increase in 2011.
I've been teaching Af-Pak in my security class these past few weeks. The war has been going on for so long that many "highlights" now seem like distant history.For instance, everyone remembers the farce that was George W. Bush's May 1, 2003, celebration of the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The image of the "Mission Accomplished" banner is engrained in our brains, as is the picture of Bush in flightsuit strutting to deliver his speech.However, people often forget a speech delivered by Donald Rumsfeld that same day in Kabul: Rumsfeld said that in regard to Afghanistan, Bush, U.S....
Fourteen civilians and two security officers have now died in Kashmir in violence related to rumors about the "Burn a Koran Day" in Florida. When added to the death in Afghanistan, this brings the total number of deaths to seventeen so far. Many more will die in the coming weeks and months even though the Koran burning was called off. Rumors will resurface that the burning has gone ahead even though such rumors will have no basis in reality. Why is this likely? Paul Brass' groundbreaking work on institutionalized systems to produce riots may help us to better understand what is happening and...
For those of you who do not know, I live in Gainesville, Florida, a college town in Northeast Florida with lots of wonderful things - like a great bunch of colleagues, a great bunch of graduate students, weather to write home about, and a (frequently) rocking football team. It is (largely) a fairly politically progressive place, but there's still good country music - a great home to mix my Southern roots and lefty-academic tendencies. It is also, however, the place where the "Qu'ran burning" almost happened, and (thankfully) didn't. But that didn't stop it from causing deaths all the way...
The following, unless otherwise specified, result in the taking of one drink for every observation/sighting at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association. The Duck of Minerva is not responsible for any liver damage or unfortunate choice of panel questions that may result after participating in this game.Someone wearing their conference badge at 2am or more than a mile from the actual conference site.Bow-ties.Observing two people talking where one person is looking over their shoulder for someone more important. Someone carrying their own book around.Young scholar...
Ah, the viciously gate-keeping peer review, the contemporary equivalent of burning the heretics at the stake. Receiving such a review seems to be a rite of passage in virtually every academic field and discipline of which I am aware, and though the details change, the general theme of such a review is always something like: "Author didn't make the argument I would have made or have made, or even worse, Author directly challenged the argument I made or would have made; hence, since I am protected by a veil of anonymity, I will take my vengeance on Author by taking Author to task for being...