It’s our first “actual” installment of Whiskey & IR Theory in Space! We discuss Star Trek: Th…
Episode 30: A Long, Strange Trek
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Recent Posts
Teaching in the Age of Corona, One Year Later
Last year, at this time, I wrote about my first experiences in the new online teaching free-for-all era. Besides no longer using Corona, what else have I learned from teaching online? [Note, I...
A Gilded Age of Social Science: Big Data Governance, Neopositivist Social Science and Covid-19
As an American living in London, I wake up every morning and check statistics: the number of positive cases reported the prior day in both the UK and US, the number of deaths, hospitalizations and...
Episode 16: Promises, Promises
Patrick and Dan continue their nostalgic tour of 1990s international-relations theory and spend s…
More Recent Posts
Intervention and the Prospects for Power-Sharing in Iraq
This is a guest post by Philip Martin, PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks advises a U.S. approach to Iraq which uses military force to arm-twist Iraqi elites into forming...
Friday Nerd Blogging
Context here. On proper dragon-chaining technique, see this must read.
Sex, Bugs and Violence on Game of Thrones’ Epic Fourth Season
In the same weekend that parents around the nation watched their high-school and college students graduate and spread their wings for brighter shores, Game of Thrones served us up a season finale that was both about passages out of childhood, and about the shadow of parent-child relationships that...
Is All of This Focus on Transitional Justice Really Worth It?
[Note: This is a guest post by Geoffrey Dancy, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tulane University] Nearly every civil war negotiation or democratic revolution is now accompanied by a consideration of how to publicly address previous human rights abuses—what practitioners refer to as...
Obama and ISIL
President Obama announced that the U.S. will send up to 300 military advisors to assist the Iraqis in the fight against the Sunni Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, ISIL, but there will be no American troops on the ground and no air strikes for now. “Ultimately, this is something that is going...
What the Public Heard/Saw in the Headlines for the ‘Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence’
If you haven't read Pablo K's piece on Angelina Jolie, celebrity, and the Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, you should. There has been some broader discussion about the pros (see 'Hollywood can actually help solve complex global problems') and cons of celebrity 'endorsement'...
Announcement: Interpretive Methods Workshop for Grad Students
Graduate students interested in interpretive methods may wish to sign up for this workshop at ISA-Northeast in November. Complete details are below the fold. “Interpretive and Relational Research Methodologies” A One-Day Graduate Student Workshop Sponsored by the International Studies...
What do we want? Labor Day! When do we want it? Soon!
I'm sure most of you have seen this nice Change.Org petition concerning the dates of the annual APSA meeting. I really like all the reasons given for changing the date of the meeting and am glad we are having this discussion. Any thoughts, Duck readers? Is it worth changing the dates of the...
The Waste Pickers of Brasilia
Two weeks ago as part of our class, we visited Brasilia's landfill site, known as Lixão, which again underscored some of the incredible contradictions in the country. It is a vast site, with six open dumping sites, this is one of the largest landfills in all of Latin America. Controversy...
Why Mass Shootings Make Gun Control Less Likely to Pass Congress
**This is a guest post by Dr. Christopher Neff, Lecturer in Public Policy at University of Sydney.** This past week President Obama marked one year since legislative efforts at gun control failed in the Congress. He lamented at the normalization of school shootings in the United...
New Report from Brazil on Global Civil Society and Small Arms Control
For a perspective on how global civil society might better mobilized for armed violence reduction read this new report, by a Brazilian humanitarian disarmament NGO, Instituto SoudaPaz. "What's Next?" is both an up-to-date manifesto on the importance and political tactics by which small arms...
Blogging from Brazil: Problems of Connectivity
So, at this point, I've been all over Brazil, though that's like saying I've toured the United States in five weeks. That said, I've been in five or six cities all over the country (I'll load a better map soon), and the internet speed has invariably been crap, even in pretty expensive hotels. I'm...