If you’ve spent any amount of time in Washington, there’s a good chance you’ve internalized a rosier narrative of the Cold War than the actual history warrants (I certainly had). To correct that, I have an essay out in Foreign Affairs with...
I assigned Plato’s Theaetetus this semester in my foreign policy class. It was the very first thing we read in a course that included more standard text’s like Walter Russel Mead’s Special...
One thing that Trump hasn't done today yet (which he should have if he wants to stay in Putin's good graces) was to congratulate Russians with Victory day. It's an incredibly important holiday in...
One of the (many) concerns about the Trump Administration's foreign policy is the impact it will have on US influence around the world. Will Trump's rhetoric and actions restore US dominance in the...
Audio from the Speculative Fiction and Pedagogy panel at the International Studies Association-Northeast 2012 convention.
Krauthammer says that Obama doesn't have a "mandate." In 2004 he argued that Bush had one. According to Krauthammer: [Obama] won by going very small, very negative," said Krauthammer, speaking on FOX News as throngs of Obama supporters danced in celebration over Obama's re-election victory. "This...
This is the audio (in mp3 format) from the Speculative Fiction and Pedagogy panel at the International Studies Association-Northeast 2012 convention. The panel featured Henry Farrell, Dan Nexon, Jennifer Lobasz, and PTJ. Notes: The new feed for Duck of Minerva podcasts is here. I will continue to...
This is the audio (in m4a format) from the Speculative Fiction and Pedagogy panel at the International Studies Association-Northeast 2012 convention. The panel featured Henry Farrell, Dan Nexon, Jennifer Lobasz, and PTJ. Notes: The new feed for Duck of Minerva podcasts is here. I will continue to...
One nice thing about a status-quo election: it doesn't leave international-affairs experts with a great deal to prognosticate on. It will be interesting to see if the administration does, indeed, show more "flexibility" on BMD cooperation with Moscow and if it makes a push on Israel-Palestine. We...
It was sort of sad watching conservatives play the same game that we did in 2004. Poll aggregation + 1; bubblethought -15.
Amazing how the Simpsons is still pretty funny after 25 years… In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I’d list the reasons why I voted the way I did. I know conservative media regularly accuse professors of politicizing the classroom, but an honest discussion of why one chooses the...
One reason we decided to move to WordPress is superior podcast support. Of course, there's a learning curve involved. So this is a test run of the new podcast feed. If it works, you should have the option of playing my interview with Janice Bially Mattern directly from this post. That's all,...
US citizens who haven't voted early should exercise axiological rationality and cast their ballots. If you live in Maryland, please consider voting "yes" on Question 6. John Sides takes umbrage at Michael Gerson's attacks on political science. If you squint hard enough at Gerson's arguments then...
Electoral Outcomes For obvious reasons, I'm much less confident of my predictions in 2012 than in 2008. I think there's a good chance that Florida, Colorado, and Virginia might go the other way. North Carolina and New Hampshire could as well. Regardless, it looks pretty likely that Obama is going...
My good friend and awesome protest/network scholar Michael Heaney at the University of Michigan has released a documentary film, THE ACTIVISTS: WAR, PEACE, AND POLITICS IN THE STREETS. The film is with Melody Weinstein and Marco Roldán and, in addition to the central message of the film, shows the...
Laleh Khalili's Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford, 2012) looks fascinating. An interesting piece by Karen Burhnam (at SF Signal) on what the discovery of a rocky planet around Alpha Centauri means for human deep-space exploration. Alexandra Gheciu at CIPSBlog on...