American Dove makes pragmatic case for a dovish foreign policy. The use of force is a terrible foreign-policy instrument: it’s expensive and hardly ever works.
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Before you leave for the holiday season: Nominate your friends for The Duckies!
Grades are in, reviews submitted, and I'm headed out for the holiday season. Â I hope you are wrapping up the semester and/or enjoying a well-deserved break. Â Please remember to submit your...
The Passing of a Global Health Giant
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...
Duck Retirement: what 7 years of blogging has given me
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...
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Tenure Letters: To Sling or to Shoot Arrows?
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...
Classroom Activity: Simplification is not a Sin
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...
What is Cyber Hygiene?
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...
Monday Morning Linkage
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...
How the Blogosphere Helps Junior Scholars?
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...
Online Media Caucus at the ISA: The Time Is Now-ish
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...
Friday Nerd Blogging
May the bard be with you. See also "The Empire Striketh Back."
How Do You Change a Policy That Doesn’t Exist?: the combat exclusion one year later
Despite numerous calls to ‘Let Women Fight’, internal reviews of the policy, and growing evidence of women’s contributions to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the January 2013 announcement that the combat exclusion would be removed was not entirely expected. For years leading up to the announcement, Congress and the Department of Defense had justified the exclusion as essential to national security. Moreover, less than 12 months before the decision to remove the exclusion, then–Pentagon press secretary George Little announced that although 14,000 new combat related jobs would be opened to...