Grad students who weren’t schooled at elite universities face real challenges in a squeezed academic job market. But many talented grad students do reach tenure when they receive the same support and guidance offered in elite universities.
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...
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...
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...
My students and I have just read Emilie Hafner-Burton's grand treatise on the human rights regime, Making Human Rights a Reality. Following her earlier empirical studies, this is a sweeping descriptive appraisal of how human rights law works and why it works so poorly, coupled with a level-headed argument about strategies that human rights champions or "stewards" might adopt to achieve concrete improvements in human rights performance by circumventing existing human rights machinery. The book is readable, exhaustive and pitched to a non-scholarly audience; it combines an overview of...
This piece has been making waves in the academic world (for a much better set of recommendations, see this piece). It gets much attention because it both identifies a real problem and then suggests awful ways to handle it. The latter is easier to deal with quickly. However, first let me be clear--what I am talking about here are the letters that universities ask outside scholars to write as they evaluate candidates for tenure and/or promotion. The basic idea is that these letters serve two purposes (at least): so that folks who do specialized work can be fairly evaluated if their work is...
Editor's note: this is a slightly modified version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. As I mentioned here, I've decided to try "flipping the classroom" this semester, meaning I'm now posting the lectures online and using the class time this frees up for Q&A and for activities meant to reinforce core concepts and create strong incentives for students to keep up with the lectures from week to week. These activities will take a variety of forms, and I'll post about each one in case anyone out there is interested. Look below the fold for a description of the first...
I was struck this morning to read a post on a Cyber Security forum with a link stating the "Super Bowl was Hacked!" Â Clicking on the link lead to this write up and picture. Â I can't think of better visualization of the need for basic cyber hygiene. Â The cyber security industry kills many trees and wastes much bandwidth on discussions of cyber offensive and defensive strategies. Â Yet, if we can't practice basic cyber hygiene, what is the point? The UK Cabinet estimated that as much of 80 percent of cyber crime can be prevented with basic cyber hygiene. Â While that figure is pretty much a wild...
Howdy.  Here are your Monday links... A useful graphic on which countries are taking Syrian refugees. The best tribute to Pete Seeger I saw came from Outlook India, which has audio of Seeger singing Gandhi's "Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram" and Indians singing "Hum Honge Kamyaab" ("We Shall Overcome"). The NY Times' India Ink explains "Why  the US Embassy Releases Pollution Data in Beijing but not in New Delhi." Al Jazeera has a retrospective on the Iranian Revolution, which will turn 35 on 11 February.  Arguably, it was the most important revolution since 1789. Chad Raymond at Active Learning in...
Dear Readers, In this post, I would like to focus on the few ways in which the blogosphere and social media more generally help junior scholars. I will use myself as an example. It is not easy for me to reach out to senior colleagues and start a dialogue. I find it much easier to respond to a blog post they publish than to email them out of the blue. Right before last ISA, I contacted a senior scholar about his guest post on the Duck. He replied in the kindest manner possible. And I had the privilege to have lunch with him at ISA. I am very thankful. I am interested in meeting new...
The events of the last week within the International Studies Association indicate that there is much ignorance about social media and its role in 21st century IR scholarship and teaching. On the bright side, the reactions to the ISA's misguided proposal demonstrated that there is a vibrant community of scholars who rely on "web 2.0" in a variety of ways. This has led myself and others to conclude that the time has come for an Online Media Caucus to be formed within the ISA. The head of each Caucus (like each section and region) has a seat and a vote at the meetings of the Governing...
May the bard be with you. See also "The Empire Striketh Back."