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
All Journals Can, and Should, Provide Decision Letters and Reviewer Reports to Referees
Note: This is the third post in an occasional series in which I talk about lessons learned (or related stuff) from my time editing International Studies Quarterly. My prior posts focused on "best...
Has regression analysis shrunk our imaginations?
I realize this is a weird thing for me to ask, since the vast majority of my publications--as well as a few of my works in progress--have relied on regression. But I was wondering this recently...
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,...
More Recent Posts
USC/CSIS Conference on Korean Unification (1): it will cost WAY more than people think
The University of Southern California Korean Studies Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are running a joint Korea Project: Planning for the Long Term (pic to the left). CSIS will hold the last of three conferences in this project at the Asan Institute on January 21st...
Podcast No. 18 – Interview with Stefano Guzzini
The eighteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Stefano Guzzini of the Danish Institute for International Studies and Uppsala University . Professor Guzzini discusses, among other things his intellectual and educational background, his important work on power in international...
So You Want to be a Liberal Arts College Professor?
Ok, you went to Oberlin or maybe Swarthmore or Bowdoin or Haverford or Macalester. It was your first experience away from home -- your first real intellectual stimulation, the drugs, the sex -- it was a total mind blowing experience. You had dinner at a professor’s house and then stayed late into...
Friday Morning Linkage….Mali Edition
New term alert: France is worried that Mali and the region is turning into "Afrighanistan." If you didn't see this on Wednesday, go back and read Adrienne LeBas's piece here on Duck. Some evidence of Malian support for intervention? Mohammed Adow at Al Jazeera's Africa blog also thinks so. Gregory...
Sex is Better on Thursday Linkage: Everything you Need to Know about the Suzanne Moore “Trans Scandal”
Brazilian transexual, feminist anger, the 'arrival' of the trans lobby, and a journalist leaving twitter. Did you get it all this week? In case you didn't, here's the summary (without commentary/opinion for now) with all the links you need: A few days ago Suzanne Moore (a journalist for the...
Citing academic literature, NRA calls for proliferation of weapons for children of all ages
The Canard "All the fake news that's fit to print" I feel the need to make a disclaimer here. If you think I am trying to get a tasteless laugh out of a tragic situation, you are incorrect. I have made my views about the gun lobby known here. In light of recent NRA proposals to place armed guards...
The MOOC Top Ten
I should probably be wary of taunting the coming moopocalypse, but, as everyone knows, I laugh in the face of obsolescence. So, without further explanation, here are my top ten reasons for MOOCs: 10. The "sage on a stage" isn't just dead... she's undead and in high-definition. 9. Web 1.0 monetized...
Magical Thinking in the Sahel
This time last week, international intervention plans in Mali consisted of a rather under-powered African (ECOWAS) force, which was expected to arrive no earlier than September. This force was not backed by overpowering consensus. Nigeria and Mauritania, the two best-equipped militaries in the...
Null Results
Chris Blattman links to a paper (PDF) that finds no relationship between oil production and violence. He comments: Regardless what you believe, however, there’s a striking shortage of null results papers published in top journals, even when later papers overturn the results. I’m more and more...
Wednesday Morning Linkage
In the spirit of last night's post, two blogs worth reading: Empirical Legal Studies and The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale. Here's Carolyn Shapiro at the former talking about two posts by Dan Kahan at the latter. Every once in a while I attempt to goad PTJ by sending him links to pieces that...
Another Virtue of Blogsphere Engagement?
PM's latest post, "Nobody cares about foreign policy" (note to self: we need a style manual to resolve whether, for example, post titles should be capitalized), was prompted by a proseminar we both attended on Monday. At this proseminar, the always-interesting and invariably thoughtful Elizabeth...
Nobody cares about foreign policy
It bears repeating that nobody votes on foreign policy, and most folks don't know anything about it anyway (remember that a nontrivial number of Americans think South Korea is our greatest enemy). I'll quote myself: [N]obody gives a damn about foreign policy. Theories of democratic responsiveness...