It's a nostalgia episode for our two hosts, Patrick and Dan. They tackle Mustafa Emirbayer's 1997 article in the American Journal of Sociology, "Manifesto for a Relational Sociology." According to Emirbayer, "Sociologists today are faced with a...
Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. He speaks about his decision, eventually, to focus on Rwanda as the basis for his dissertation.
Tony Lang discusses philosophy, writing, and why the International Ethics section of the ISA developed into such a friendly environment for junior scholars.
A discussion with Nina Kollars and Mark Raymond about the SolarWinds hack, recorded in March, 2021
Halfdan Mahler, the Danish physician who served three five-year terms as Director-General of the World Health Organization, died last week in Geneva. Mahler may not be a household name, but he helped to fundamentally transform our collective notions of what global health is and should be. In this moment where WHO is undergoing its own re-examination of its priorities and programs, Mahler’s vision reminds us what could be. He also shows how global health is inextricably linked to international relations and politics. Mahler’s career mirrors the World Health Organization itself in many ways....
It's time. I'm signing off as permanent member of the Duck of Minerva after seven (7!?!) years of blogging. The experience has helped shape me as a professional, writer, and member of the IR and online communities. I began blogging during my first nervous year as an academic and continued through to the current realisation that I'm now a *youthful* mid-career scholar. My posts have covered a very wide range of topics, including ebola, Anthony Weiner's first set of dick picks, women and combat in the US military, and the parallels between police and military racism and brutal tactics. I'm...
This is a guest post by Ariel I. Ahram (@arielahram). Ahram is an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs and is the author of Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias (Stanford, 2011). A few years ago the possibility that an American president would be complicit as armed supporters attacked members of opposition would have seemed far-fetched. Yet the alliance between president-elect Donald Trump and the so-called ‘alt-right’, a protean alignment of nativists, xenophobes, Christian identarians, and white supremacists, raises this...
It now looks like the candidate who boasted that he knew more than the generals will be a President who appoints them and asks their advice. There has been considerable criticism of this from those concerned about a concentration of civilian power in the hands of former military brass. This is well-reasoned, because a pipeline from the Pentagon to the White House potentially gives too much civilian authority to the military and narrows the lens through which policy is made. We ought to look critically at the institutional consequences of appointing flag officers to cabinet office or key...
Gone are the good old days when I had to explain what the word ‘yarki’ means to my friends and colleagues (for the record, ‘colorful’, not ‘brilliant’). Now I will have to clarify the complexities of planting child pornography into the computers of oppositional leaders thanks to the re-emergence of ‘kompromat’. Why did kompromat, arguably a KGB-developed practice of mining compromising material on politicians and blackmailing them with it, surface again in the media? As Fabian Burkhardt noticed, the word first appeared in the English language with the information wars of the 90s. Moreover,...
When I was young, I dreamed of Italy. Once in a while, my father would pull out the slide projector and show us pictures from his life on a mountain near Colle Isarco, not far from Italy’s border with Austria. He taught me to speak a little in both Italian and German, which I loved. My father, though, is not Italian, and his sojourn at a mountaintop telecom site (still the only time he’s ever been outside North America) came all-expenses-paid courtesy of the U.S. Air Force, which he joined after being drafted during the Vietnam War. That period of conscription, which ended in 1973, was the...
Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory started by alt-right Twitter which alleged that John Podesta's emails exposed some members of the Democratic party as being part of a DC pizzeria-based child-sex ring, has made its way into Russian social networks. Now some people are convinced of the existence of pedophile lobby that ‘rules’ the US, and believe that both ‘lamestream’ media and elites are trying to hush it up. As one Russian LiveJournal user puts it: its’ ‘American internet community versus pedophiles in politics’. Why do people believe that debunked conspiracy theory? Two reasons: the blood...
Before the election, I offered that I would write three posts on bridging the sharp divides that have us in warring camps--one on a unity agenda, the second on changes in the tone of our public discourse, and the third on increased civic engagement. Honesty is the best policy so I’ll start by saying that I did not think President-elect Trump would win. While I’m being honest, I’ll add that I’m a liberal democrat who found Trump’s victory deeply and personally devastating. To make all of this honesty even worse, what I will propose as a Trump unity agenda is largely what most would consider a...