Jarrod talks with Professor Marwa Daoudy about her new book, The Origins of The Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security (Cambridge, 2020).
Episode 8 : Marwa Daoudy discusses Syria and Climate Change
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Featured
Girl Power
Women in academia do not enjoy an easy ride. Even though “manel” count at this year’s ISA was much lower, there is still work to be done. Not to mention the recent scandal about the epidemic levels...
Trump Reminded Me Why I Am An Academic
This is a guest post by Idean Salehyan. Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Dallas “Why did you become an academic?” is a question that I’m frequently asked. For me, my...
Black History Month
Do you think this person is white? If you are from Europe or North America, you might have said yes. If you are from Russia, you might have described this person as black. Most IR peeps are familiar...
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Mid-Week Linkage
Fewer linkage posts lately due to conference travel, grad admissions season, linkage burnout etc. Here's a few for your clicking pleasure: Human Security: Chemical weapons are alleged to have been used on civilians in Benue State, Nigeria. Daily Kos on why the protests in Taiwan are being under-covered. I have mixed feelings about this Guardian photo-story about children born to genocidal rape survivors in Rwanda, but it's well worth a look. Hawaii has become the first US state legislature to put forth a bill banning the use of lethal autonomous weapons. Academica: International Studies...
Social Media and Protests
[Note: A more detailed version of this post appeared at my personal blog.] The Cairo protests that ultimately led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak received a great deal of attention on Twitter—the most used hashtag in 2011 was #egypt—leading much discussion over whether we were seeing "a Twitter revolution." But the mere fact that protests occurred at the same time as an increase in calls for regime change on social media does not establish that the latter in any way fueled the former. The same factors that lead people to take to the streets might drive behavior online. Absent a credible...
An East-West Bridge for Ukraine
[Note: This is a guest post by Joshua B. Spero, Associate Professor of International Politics and Coordinator of International Studies at Fitchburg State University.] Since the Russia-Ukraine crisis accelerated with Russia’s territorial consolidation in Ukraine, Europe is back on the radar screen as great powers and international institutions struggle to de-escalate this security dilemma. After President Obama’s European trip and coordination with European Union (EU) and NATO leaders on 26 March, the international community should pause to consider that, unlike classic power politics...
Translating Conference-Speak
I’m leaving for the Midwest Political Science Association conference this afternoon, a wonderful 3 days since I returned from ISA. I’m a little (*cough*) “conferenced-out” – it wasn’t a good idea to do both conferences so close to each other. I am excited, however, to see all the fabulous IO panels at Midwest. As I finished up the last of my conference slides this morning, I was reflecting on the “conference-ese” we all use and what our phrases actually mean. To the untrained participant, the phrase might not get noticed. For the seasoned conference participant, however, it is obvious...
Data Street Cred
I am not known for being a statistics whiz. I have published quantitative work, but I am seen, rightly so, as more comfortable with qualitative work, comparing apples and oranges. Still, I had the gumption to offer advice on twitter about data today. What and why? GDELT was a new dataset that seemed to promise heaps of utility to those who wanted to study event data--which are counts of particular events of interest and handy for analyzing events over time. It came under fire recently for a variety of reasons. I did not use the dataset nor do I work with event data, so I am not in any...
Patricia Weitsman Scholarship
Patty didn't want flowers, so instead endow a scholarship at Ohio University. This is from an email her husband sent out to her supporters: Please visit Ohio.edu/ Give and note in the online form that the gift is in memory of Dr. Patricia Weitsman and request that funds be designated to The Patricia A. Weitsman Memorial Scholarship, or call (740) 593-0732 to make a gift via phone She was such a great person, a terrific teacher and influential scholar. I am glad that that her school will have something lasting to mark her memory and her contributions.
Dear Friends of Patty
Dear friends of Patty, The news is awful. The second battle with leukemia is over, but this time, Patty lost. The last effort to treat the disease failed, as she died last night. I thought her friends in the IR business should know. I found out about her struggle late during the first round of her fight, but was kept apprised via a community info-sharing/coordination group the second time. It is clear that Patty was just as brave, stubborn, tough, and all that the second time, but it was apparently not enough. Over the past year or two, I have been sending Patty silly pictures to try to...
Imposters at the ISA?
Long ago, Dan Drezner posted about the imposter syndrome. The basic idea is that many folks feel as if they will be found out, that there are other folks out there that are smarter, more informed and that one is just getting away with being less than that until eventually getting found out. That piece resonated with me way back then, and it was funny to hear multiple people raise it this week in Toronto at the ISA. I suddenly realized why this might be the case: there are so many impressive people doing impressive stuff that everyone seems better, more expert and so on, so more folks feel...