Jarrod is joined by Daniela Lai and Adam Lerner to talk about the role of big questions in IR scholarship and teaching.
Does IR ask big questions?
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Recent Posts
Agent. Foreign Agent
Warning! According to the law that the Russian parliament passed yesterday, this post might need to be prefaced with a disclaimer that the following text has been compiled by a foreign agent. An...
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Policy Engagement* (*But Were Too Afraid to Ask)
Earlier this year, our team at the Sié Center at the University of Denver announced our program on the three R’s of Academic-Policy Engagement (or R3, if you prefer): Rigor, Relevance, and...
IR, it’s time to talk about what the “multiple comparisons issue” really is
As a reviewer and recipient of reviews, I've noted a recent trend among IR papers. A study uses cross-national data with regression analysis, and runs multiple models with different variables or...
More Recent Posts
Save IR and Politics at University of the West of England
Earlier today, I received an email alerting me to the fact that the University of the West of England’s Academic Board supported a recommendation from the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group to close all international relations and politics programs. Apparently, the plan is to refocus the university...
Arguments for a New STAR TREK Series
Because "53 reasons" is just plain stupid, and increments of five are basically listicles, I provide three. 1. We are heading straight for maximum Star Wars saturation. Despite its ham-handed didacticism, Star Trek's values are far preferable to those of Star Wars. We cannot allow aristocratic...
Tuesday Morning Linkage Club
Only a handful of links this morning: Seth Masket investigates what happens when you raise the cost of voting. Unsurprising: minority and poor voters suffer more. Tim Burke pushes back against MOOCs and the failure of managerial class models of higher education. Nina Zumel provides a public...
Clever Pun on MOOCs
Okay, I don't have one. But I'd like to call attention to some excellent discussion of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Adam Kotsko asks "what is the business model for online education." Nigel Thrift analyzes the recent "media obsession" with MOOCs. Louis Betty makes unfortunate swipes at...
Celebrate President’s Day with a West Wing Marathon
Here's the ten eleven best West Wing episodes you should watch today: Noel Posse Comitatus A Proportional Response kludge
Cat Fancy, Parent Company of Duck of Minerva, Subject of Takeover Bid by Nerd Pornography Site
The Canard “All the Fake News that is Fit to Print” Cat Fancy, Inc. is the target of an aggressive takeover bid by Battlestar Galacitcum, an upstart nerd pornography site. The Duck of Minerva, purchased by Cat Fancy earlier in the year, would be the prize in the acquisition. A mainstay among...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good Morning! Let's start the week in the Asia-Pacific... North Korea It looks like US officials met secretly with North Korea three times in 2011 and 2012 without telling Japan or South Korea. Why the US loaded heavy equipment, including a bulldozer, on their plane during a stopover in Tokyo...
The Lost Jedi Art of Reading Closely
I thought, mistakenly, that the Hoth symposium had run its course: Ackerman point, a bunch of us counterpoint both at Danger Room and elsewhere (here at Duck, and, if it's not up yet it will be soon, over at Grand Blog Tarkin), and my tossing a little more fuel on the fire by arguing what I...
Saturday Linkage
Belated Valentine's from the Duck of Minerva. Brad DeLong wants Cosma Shalzi to figure out what the Chelyabinsk meteorite strike means for policy: "What should this piece of information do, decision-theoretically, to change our view of the situation we find ourselves in?" I'm not a statistics...
Friday Nerd Blogging, Hiatus Ends Appropriately
We have fallen short of our Friday responsibilities, but given the theme of the week, this video seems most appropriate. Of course, this raises all kinds of possibilities and re-definitions of "bad" PR. My guess is that the best episode of this series of six web-isodes will be the next one. The...
About that Gallup LGBT Survey
In a nifty contribution to our understanding of LGBT politics, Gallup has surveyed more than 200,000 Americans to ask if they identify as LGBT or not. This gives us what Gallup claims and I'll accept as the first state-level estimate of this dataset. But Gallup mistakenly interprets their own...
Friday Morning Linkage
If it looks like a Duck -- the Monkey Cage's take on the Hagel filibuster and the politics of the Senate Daniel Serwer thinks the US should be funneling money to Moaz al Khatib and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition forces. Corruption and inefficiency in the...