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...
The Bridging the Gap team is thrilled to announce the addition of a new member of our leadership team: Emmanuel Balogun, the inaugural BtG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow. We recently sat...
As someone who works on religion and politics, I encounter the term "soft power" a lot. Most of the time it's in a good way; soft power is a means to advocate for policies that draw on our values...
Hilary Matfess is a PhD candidate at Yale University, an incoming professor at the University of Denver’s Korbel School, and a 2020-2021 United States Institute for Peace (USIP) Peace...
The reactions I’ve received to some of my recent op-eds have led me to reconsider the relationship between scholarship and politics, and to question the role of social capital in shaping scholarly opinion. Over the last several months, I have published some pieces that have strayed from what had been my consistent “liberal Zionist” position. One investigated the dark underbelly of Tel Aviv (where I visited the remains of Palestinian villages with Israeli “decolonial” activist Eitan Bronstein). Another (with independent historian Peter Eisenstadt) challenged the “empathy” discourse prevalent...
There’s an interesting debate going on over at openGlobalRights. Drawing on their recent Social Problems article, Neve Gordon and Nitza Berkovitch provocatively accuse human rights quantitative scholars of “concealing social wrongs” by using quantitative cross-national data that does not account for the disproportionately high voter disenfranchisement among African Americans. Todd Landman and Chad Clay, two scholars known for their use/production of quantitative human rights data respond to Gordon and Berkovitch, saying that their piece ignores much quantitative human rights scholarship...
Russia has been one of the spectres haunting the US presidential election. President Obama’s latest press conference is a case in point: Mr. Trump's continued flattery of Mr. Putin, and the degree to which he appears to model many of his policies and approaches to politics on Mr. Putin, is unprecedented in American politics and is out of step with not just what Democrats think but out of step with what up until the last few months almost every Republican thought, including some of the ones who are now endorsing Mr. Trump It is rather bewildering for a Russian observer: the party that gave...
This is a life or death election for women and girls all over the world. True, many precious human rights and civil rights are on the line. Those rights--and the lives they protect--matter deeply and urgently. I chose the title of this essay to honor the Black Lives Movement and the civil rights story of which it is the most recent chapter, not as a challenge or a condition. And in many ways, the path to equal human dignity for women in the United States has tracks which run alongside the road to the vindication of rights for black Americans. It is not a coincidence that the last sixty years...
Thanks to the Duck editorial board for having me join to guest blog for the next six months. I'm looking forward to being part of the conversation here. I bring experience working with the Senate on humanitarian and national security issues, with non-profits on detainee treatment and disaster response, and in teaching which included a course on national security law as it relates to the conflict against ISIS. I've also volunteered in military hospitals and in the field after disasters, and watched relatives suffer from terrible illnesses like Alzheimer's Disease. These last experiences, and...
This is a guest post by Justin Schon, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He studies information diffusion within conflict zones, as well as how civilians make decisions regarding their migration during conflict, and has conducted fieldwork with Syrian and Somali refugees in Jordan, Kenya, Turkey, and the United States. He tweets at @goliathSchon. Last week’s announcement of the signing of a deal between the European Union (EU) and Afghanistan that allows EU member states to deport Afghan civilians back to Afghanistan appalled many human...
We’re not so different, you and I. We both dislike Hillary. It doesn’t really matter that she was among key players in the Russian reset policy back in 2009, we really don’t trust her – just like you! We also like a strong leader. Our leader is much better at doing business than yours though. You have a misogynist pig for a presidential candidate? We’ll take that and raise you a foreign minister who jokes about female journalists on their knees. Not to mention a former children’s ombudsman who thinks that after 27 women shrivel up, and that it’s ok for a teenager to be married off as a...
We're happy to announce some new guest Ducks, some old guests staying on, and additions to our permanent contributors. In reverse order, Jarrod Hayes and Heather Roff-Perkins have joined us as permanent contributors. They have brought keen insights on a range of topics so we're happy they have agreed to stay on in a permanent capacity! Maryam Deloffre, Jeffrey Stacey, and William Kindred Winecoff continue on as guests with important insights on global health, security, and IPE respectively. Our thanks to our guests from last year -- Annick, Cai, Seth, Tom, and Wendy -- for their valuable...