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
Coffee and TV: Election Edition
A couple of years ago, I conducted a Gary Steyngart-esque experiment and watched Russian TV for a day, to find out in what kind of information bubble a regular Russian person lives. This...
Episode 14 – Harry Gould
Harry Gould of FIU talks punishment and IR, his career, and coping with loss.
Duck Podcast G&T series episode 1: Power, realism, and the politics of IR Academia
Anne Harrington and Jacqueline (Jill) Hazelton take center stage in the inaugural G&T episode.
More Recent Posts
Why Does South Korea View Japan as a National Security Threat Worse than China? My Hypothesis: Competition with North Korea
This has been on my mind a lot because the Korea-Japan meltdown has been so bad recently. And I think it’s a good research question if you are into Asian IR. I have written about this before and just did again this month and yet again. I’ve argued repeatedly that the reason America’s allies in...
Thursday Morning Linkage
What's right and wrong in the world this holiday season? This is a sundry list related to recent interests of mine, mostly related to humanitarian assistance. UN seeks record $13 billion for humanitarian assistance in 2014, half of it for Syria More than half of Syria’s population of 22 million is...
Dear Kansas Board of Regents
Dear Kansas Board of Regents, Greetings. You probably don’t know me but I’ve been a long-time user of your services. I started my college career taking dual-credit courses at Pratt Community College in 1996, I attended the Kansas Board of Regents Honors Academy in 1998, and I am a graduate of...
Quacking is Dangerous to Your Health?
I might have to re-think this whole life choice. Tenure is supposed to mean more than just job security--that it is about academic freedom. To teach and research in ways that may not always be popular and certainly in ways that are not politically desirable. Yet in the past couple of weeks, we...
In Defense of Teaching (and Grading) the Long Research Paper
There's a Slate article titled "The End of the College Essay" circulating in various Facebook and Twitter circles critical of assigning long essays to undergraduates. The gist of the complaint mirrors the complaints I've heard over the years from students and colleagues (and others outside the...
Tuesday Afternoon Linkage: A Dish Best Served Cold
I hope cold links are good as the temperature up in Ottawa is now just at 0F (known as the temperature where dogs whine and snot freezes in one's nose). Anyhow, here are my last links of 2013: Lots of stuff out there on the Chinese Air Defense ID Zone, so here is one that clarifies what it is and...
Blogging Awards Nomination Update
The nominations are trickling in, but there's more work to be done. We had some major IR blogging events this year -- Snowden, Egypt, Syria, Russia, etc.... and we're looking for nominations for the best work out there in 2013. We're still taking nominations through the end of the month. Sage...
Having it All? A Male Academic’s Perspective
With Thanksgiving behind us and the winter holidays and family time approaching, the season encourages some stock-taking and reflection. We at the Duck have been having a bit of behind the scenes emailing about the challenges of finding child care, and I wanted to recount a happier story from my...
Friday Nerd Blogging: The Tasty Sequel
Much baking to be had this time of year, so it only makes sense that we play the Hungry Games again:
Human Rights Week Roundup: New Work by (Somewhat) New Scholars
December 10th was UN Human Rights Day, starting off Human Rights Week. In many regards, 2013 has been a very good year for human rights practices around the world. In other regards, 2013 has had some abysmal failures when it comes to human rights on the ground, especially the rights of sexual...
The Importance of Angry Letters
Editor’s Note: this is an abbreviated version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. How can international institutions foster cooperation given that they lack enforcement capability? One view, quite simply, is that they can't. This view is shared by realists and many outside the...
The Good Old Days
When people lament about how broken academia is now (for example Higgs of Higgs-Boson), I am so tempted to generalize about the olden days: Many, if not most, jobs were not advertised publicly and many job processes were really old boys networks at work. The job market may not be efficient and...