The counterfactual analysis used in debates about NATO expansion is far too limited. It makes the untenable assumption that the world would like mostly the same. This piece offers an alternative.
I was reminded on twitter that international relations professors have trained students for generations to focus on the third and second levels of analysis and dismiss the first--that individuals...
In the wake of the failed attempt at passing a boycott resolution (of Israeli academic institutions) at the recent MLA conference, here are some thoughts. (Readers of the Duck might be aware that...
I used to be a Senate staffer, and one of the most interesting parts of my job was helping Senators prepare for hearings. If I were a Senate staffer now, here’s hearing questions I’d recommend for...
For some people this has been a very good month, for others, no so much. Tenure (and by proxy promotion) is the thing most American Professors strive for, desire, believe is the crowning moment in their careers.* I will say for one, tenure denials, whether justified or outrageous – happen. Our careers are determined by many things but tenure is not one of them. It is a process filled with problems, but important nonetheless. For me, there was some liberation in having the process go poorly. Who I am kidding, I relished being denied. It freed me, allowed me to work on things I was too...
Almost exactly three years ago, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson blogged "Who’s Your Grand-Advisor? Crowdsourcing an IR lineage map" at the Duck. Patrick was searching for an academic family tree website with a focus on international relations: I did a little digging and thus far have been completely unable to locate something that I would have thought that someone would have already assembled: an online searchable database that mapped adviser-advisee relationships in IR. So far as I know, there is no such thing. Not yet. I think that a map like this would be a very useful tool for all kinds of...
In the dustup produced by Nick Kristof, one of the basic misperceptions keeps being repeated--that the American Political Science Review is not influential or readable enough. The job of the APSR is not to be read by policy-makers but by political scientists. Really? Yes. Let me explain. The academic journals have their place in the profession just as those aimed at outreach do. Why have academic journals? So that political scientists can do the science that is necessary for the generation of knowledge: developing arguments in reaction to and building on pre-existing work (that would be...
Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. As some of you may know, I'm up for tenure this year, and it's not going to work out. I don't want to get into the details of anything that ought not be discussed in public, but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts that some of you might find to be of interest. First, to the best of my understanding, my presence on social media played little to no role in this decision. So if there's still fear out there that blogging comes at a price, please don't point to my case as an example. I don't know exactly why this happened, and...
The ISA mess is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Nicholas Kristof has written a piece in his NYT column that "addresses" the controversy. The problem is that the column is out of date. Not just in focusing on the ISA proposal that has been beaten back by the forces of reason (that would be me and other bloggers?), but that other canards get lumped in. While some noted bloggers have been denied tenure, it is highly unlikely that their blogging did them in. Indeed, there is more pressure by lots of folks (presidents, provosts, deans, grant agencies) to do more outreach. And there is...
The so-called Pivot to Asia, or "rebalance" in official parlance, has been one of the Obama Administration's signature strategic moves on the global chessboard. But for all the serious engagement of the Pacific Rim countries, the core of the pivot has always been about China and responding to its rise as a regional and proto global power. U.S. intentions aside, China has accused the U.S. of using the pivot as a form of neo-containment of itself. The containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War ultimately proved to be a stabilizing strategic move by the U.S. and its western allies....
This third activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture on game theory (slides). Look below the fold for details. First, I asked them to fully characterize the optimal strategy for player 1 in the following modified centipede game, assuming player 2 adopts their optimal strategy. That second part is important, and I stressed it quite a bit. I particularly made sure it was clear that I wasn't asking them to imagine that they were playing this game with a friend. I did this because I knew that some students would argue that their answers made more sense than the one I was...
I was trying to find a good Star Wars-Valentine's Day mash up and failed. And then I thought, what would Brian Boitano do? [NFSW-words] Old oldie but a goodie. Enjoy the games and enjoy the excuse to eat lots of chocolate and smooch them if you got 'em.