What are the answers?
6+1 Questions about From the Ashes of History: Collective Trauma and the Making of International Politics
read more
Recent Posts
Mission Impossible? Creating a Dialogue between Research, Policy and Practice Communities
A guest post by Julia Palik, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Govinda Clayton, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich; Simon J. A. Mason, Head of Mediation Support Team, Center for Security Studies,...
Non-Academic Career Paths: The Dirty Secret of Academia?
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) It is a truth universally acknowledged that the academic job market is tough. Faculty openly warn political science PhD students that there are very few...
Oh Say Can You Say
You never know when IR is going to bite you in the ass. One minute you are reading a children’s nursery rhyme and the other you realize that the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Ms....
More Recent Posts
An Open Letter to Someone Contemplating a PhD and Parenting
Dear PhD Prospective (with kids or thinking about kids), Thanks for contacting me. It sounds like you missed Steve Saideman’s sage advice and are actually going to be trying to get a PhD in political science. Many top people in the discipline will keep working to discourage you from attending –...
Theory Section Redux
I want to remind interested parties that we've posted a call for suggestions for (1) the ISA Theory Section's "Distinguished Scholar" of 2014 and (2) the wording of the book prize. Vocal parties at the 2013 business meeting called for democratizing the process via this kind of mechanism; it would...
Tracking and Political-Science Journal Accountability
(click on the image to enlarge) I'm usually cautious about linking to anything in the PSJR/PSR family of sites, but this strikes me as pretty interesting: a wiki devoted to tracking political-science journals. Contributors note the journal, the turnaround time, and information about what happened...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good morning ducks! Here are your links... Even more well off people will be able to exempt themselves from TSA's airport security theater thanks to Visa credit cards. Well, it's not like potential hijackers could afford the annual fee or first-class tickets anyway. Oh wait... Do you enjoy...
What will the North Korean Military do if Japan Shoots Down the Missile Launch?
A few days ago, I predicted there would be no war, probably because I’m lazy and predicting the future will be the same as the present is an easy way to protect my credibility. But I got some criticism that I was a dippy academic who doesn’t see how dangerous the situation really is. And if I am...
Saturday Morning Linkage
The above video includes Sean Kay speaking about US-European relations and international security. Kelsey Davenport: "How to Read the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat." Scott Harold and Lowell Schwartz: "A Russia-China Alliance Brewing?" More Sino-Russian cooperation on alcohol production would...
The Awful State of US Punditry on the North Korea Crisis: Bill Richardson called Kim Il Sung ‘Kim Yun Sum,’ or something like that, on CNN Yesterday
I know what you’re thinking, I’m being a show-off area specialist, Asian language names can be hard for anglophones (and vice versa), and who cares about KIS anyway, because this crisis is about Kim Jong Un? All of that is true of course, especially the first one, but come on… Richardson isn’t...
The First Casualty of the National Science Foundation Funding Cut for Political Science
If you belong to APSA, you probably got the email announcing the last-minute closure of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute because of the Coburn (left) amendment. Undergraduate programming like this is obviously pretty vulnerable. It doesn’t have the cachet of high-profile, ‘big think’ research....
How To Interact With Your Instructor: A Guide for Undergrads
I'm passing along some ideas from Brian Matzke, a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. Making social rules and expectations explicit is a big part of contemporary classroom management, and this document is a good starting point for other instructors developing...
Renaming the Arab Spring
I've learned to limit consumption of Tom Friedman, except when he talks about the Middle East...yesterday his column suggested that the Arab Spring should be renamed in light of recent events...I think he is on to something, but I doubt his suggestion of "The Arab Quarter Century" will fly...my...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage! Algal bloom kills 240 of Florida's 5000 manatees (cause of death: natural toxin) Madonna smacked down by Malawi government after her recent visit Shale gas and methane leaks, greener than coal but by how much? Obama tells donors that the politics of the...
Midweek Linkage
And I bet that you all thought that I'd completely forgotten.... Robert Farley on the lessons of the Falklands War... for the PLA-N. Adam Elkus ruminates on the relationship between theory and math. Robert Murray: IR Theory and North Korea. Patrick M. Morgan's award-winning article: "The State of...