Reacting to a recent event on the study of religion, conflict and peace
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Recent Posts
Antisemitism, Israel and the Problem with no Easy Solution
Debates about Israel and Palestine have, as one scholar remarked to me, become the “third rail” in British academia. That needs to change. The terror attack in Manchester makes clear that UK...
The Mirage of Great-Power Competition
Back in March, I wrote a post at Lawyers, Guns and Money called “Remember ‘Great Power Competition?’ Lol.” As the “Grand Strategy” of Trump 2.0 comes into focus, I thought it...
The State of the Union is Grim
The Republic as we knew it is over. The fight now is whether the new one will be a fascistic, competitive authoritarian regime or a pluralist democracy that, one hopes, is better than what came before.
More Recent Posts
So You’ve Seen Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer is the first blockbuster about nuclear weapons in a generation. Framing his film’s namesake with kinetic edits, fractured timelines, quantum imagery, and a pulsing score, director Christopher Nolan has crafted a stylistic triumph. But...
Bridging the Policy-Academic Gap: Lessons from Australia
The benefits of bridging the gap between academics and policymakers are well-known, but much of the research and practice is based on experiences in the United States. How well does it translate to other countries? A recent collaboration between Bridging the Gap (BtG) and Monash University in...
Go Green Fast: Are the Industrial Policies of the Biden Administration Working?
Typical energy transitions unfold over 50 to 100 years. The urgency of the climate challenge means that humanity doesn’t have that kind of time. While market developments in renewables and electric vehicles are favorable, even those developments will not transform the energy landscape without...
Strategic Service on the Tenure Track
Alongside research and teaching, most tenure-track jobs come with some expectation of service.
Selection Processes in Academia: Time for a Revamp
Current trends in the academic job market paint a bleak picture. Data from U.S. universities reveal a drop in job postings in the Politics field over the past three years and a decline in tenure-track positions over the last decade. For 2021-22, APSA reported that 53.12% of job listings were...
Patriarchy and the Cult of Coercion: Pale, Male, and Stale Will Make Deterrence Fail
Carol Cohn is the G.O.A.T. Back in 1987, she wrote what is still the best gendered take on the pathologies of deterrence in a piece called, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” It absolutely demolishes the cult of the missile bro. And every deterrence scholar I know...
Episode 32: Social Forces, States, and Clydeside Whisky
Robert Cox’s landmark article, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Rela…
Predictions of a “second civil war” and the narrative landscape
Even well-intentioned warnings of political violence in the United States potentially leading to civil war may inadvertently strengthen the very same actors who are intent on making civil war a reality.
Just like Al Qaeda in its heyday, armed accelerationists in America are strategic actors who take advantage of narrative ammunition that is handed to them.
A narrative perspective lends itself to pro-active approaches, not just appropriate restraint.
Judging a book by its cover
When I was in middle school I loved history: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Middle Ages always fascinated me. Often during the summer vacation, I would read the history books in advance to prepare for the upcoming history classes (big surprise, I am a nerd). Old habits die hard, so this summer...
An Israeli Civil War: From Public Secret to Shared Illusion
For nearly three decades, a pervasive, unspoken fear of civil war created an "ugly stalemate" in Israel, a 'public secret' that pervaded its electoral politics and foreign relations. Thanks to the government's attempted "judicial overhaul," that fear is now very much in the open, Almost overnight,...
How do we get people to care about migrants?
Earlier this week, a boat carrying migrants fleeing Afghanistan sank in the English Channel, killing six. Earlier this month, 41 died after a ship sailing from Tunisia sank near Italy. There are many more examples of such tragedies I could point to, and, sadly, there will be many more in the...
Israel’s Democratic Deficit as a One-State “Solution” Emerges
I recently had the good fortune to participate in a week-long academic exchange to Israel, along with 20 or so other political scientists and historians. Because Israel isn’t one of the countries I have a lot of knowledge of, I thought this might be an opportunity to learn more about the country...