A distinctly unoriginal take on the pathologies of overvaluing academic “novelty.”
Get off my lawn! Are journal demands for “novelty” creating a culture of low-level academic dishonesty?
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Recent Posts
COVID-19 containment with style: A first-hand account of the virus containment efforts in Italy
This is a guest post from Gabriel Cardona-Fox who lives in Bologna, Italy with his wife Patricia and two daughters. He is an Associate Fellow at the Bologna Institute for Policy Research at Johns...
How the Coronavirus is Plaguing Autocracies and Democracies
This is a guest post from Renu Singh, PhD Candidate at Georgetown University in political science, researching public health policy, global health security, and European politics. After weeks of the...
2020 is cancelled
With the coronavirus taking hold, conferences being cancelled (I'm looking at you ISA), and college campuses like Harvard shuttering or going online, the coronavirus outbreak has gone global and...
More Recent Posts
Was Kaesong a Hole in the Korean Iron Curtain, or a Subsidy to the Kim Monarchy?
So it increasingly looks like the inter-Korean Kaesong industrial zone is closed for good. (The Wikipedia write-up is a pretty good quick history of it.) The zone was set-up during the Sunshine Policy period (1998-2007). It was to do 3 things: 1) Lead to some liberal-capitalist spill-over in the...
Arms transfers to Africa: Hold the phone!….China is the good guy?
This week’s topic for both my grad and undergrad human rights courses is “foreign policy and human rights promotion.” On the list of readings-not-on-last-year’s-syllabus is this little gem: “Enter the Dragon! An Empirical Analysis of Chinese versus US Arms Transfers to Autocrats and Violators of...
Replacing Nuclear Weapons
This is a guest post by Jarrod Hayes. He is Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. He received his PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southern California in 2009. His research broadly focuses on the social construction of foreign and...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good morning Duckaroos, here's some stuff I think is actually worth reading... Srinath Raghavan seemed to be one of the few pundits who could see through the dangerous level of bullshit that was the latest Sino-Indian border crisis along the LAC last week. The International Crisis Group worries...
15 Must-Read Books (And 2 Must-Watch Movies) For Political Science Students
Consider this a prompt for an open thread. I'm looking for books to recommend to students to both give them a hint of what academic political science is "really" like but also to get them excited about the systematic study of politics. No single book can do it all, but a summer reading list can at...
The End of Austerity…It’s Death is No Great Exaggeration
Something extraordinary happened in Europe this week. Enrico Letta, Italy's Prime Minister nominee, upon being tapped to form the next government made a bold press conference announcement that his primary objective upon taking office will be to end Italy's austerity program and join other leaders...
Defying Gravity: Seeking Political Balance in ICC Prosecutions
The International Criminal Court is often accused of being “political” or “politicized” in its selection of situations and cases. What has become most problematic for the Court’s credibility and impartiality in this regard are the situations and cases that have not been selected, and the criteria...
Friday morning linkage
Red lines or red lights on Syria? It's not just about Syria. What if the Tsarnaevs had been shooters instead of bombers? Playing out academic feuds in the press...Reinhart and Rogoff respond. Fodder for PTJ: What do scientifc studies tell us? Very persuasive: I spent three hours...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Mashing Up GoT
It has been a week or two since we have FNB-ed. After last week's events, we could use some extra silliness:
Professing and the Policy World
There is so much criticism of the academic enterprise these days, asserting that professors are too focused on research and not enough on teaching and not enough on relevance to the policy world. These critiques are hardly new, but bear more weight in a time of austerity. It is easy to point to...
Thursday Morning Linkage
If last's week Thursday morning linkage was Africa-themed, this week's links are China-related and inevitably harken back to the events in Boston: Laurie Garrett, as she is wont to do, wonders if this recent bird flu outbreak in China is "the big one" Beijing air is so bad they are canceling...
Nerd-Inflected Wednesday Linkage
The difference between pets in Diablo III and Torchlight II. Blah blah blah Game of Thrones blah blah credible commitments blah blah blah prisoners' dilemma. Taylor Fravel says that China hasn't abandoned no-first use. Pavel Podvig demolishes "SDI ended the Cold War" claptrap. Key graf: "The...