It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.
Our syllabi should be full of surprises
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Recent Posts
What’s a War Crime Gotta Do To Get Some Attention?
This is a guest post by Betcy Jose and Alessa Sänger. Jose is currently a Fellow in the Cluster of Excellence: Formation of Normative Orders at Goethe University. Sänger is pursuing a Master Degree...
What should we think of the Pope’s UAE visit?
Pope Francis recently visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE). His trip is historic, not just because it's the first by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He will also lead an outdoor mass, the...
The Implications of 5,000 troops to Colombia
The following is a guest post by Carla Martinez Machain, Michael Allen, Michael E. Flynn, and Andrew Stravers. One week ago, National Security Adviser John Bolton appeared at a White House briefing...
More Recent Posts
Post-Vacation Blogging
Regular blogging will begin to resume over the next weeks now that I'm back from a family road trip down the eastern seaboard and starting to gear up for the academic year. In the meantime, of possible interest to Duck readers is this terrific exhibit on The Art of Video Games at the Smithsonian...
Applying for a PhD in Political Science
I get a lot of emails asking for advice about putting together their graduate-school applications. I also get a lot of emails asking how to "improve" an application to make it "more competitive." I suspect that these emails come to me because I am Director of Admissions in the Government...
Romney is Alone in His Fear of Russia
Per Dan's post below, I don't understand why Russia is our number-one enemy, either today or ten years from now. Neither, it seems, do Americans, who have only noticed Russia's phantom menace at one period in the past several years--immediately after the invasion of Georgia in 2008. Below, polling...
Guest Post: Dave Kang – “Confucian North Korea”
I am happy to guest post my friend Dave Kang of the University of Southern California. I think Dave’s work on east Asia and IR theory is excellent; I would start with this or this if you’re interested. REKConfucian North KoreaFigure 1. Korean Worker’s Party symbolIt is easy to caricature North...
Podcast No. 2: Phil Arena on Formal Models, Civil Wars, and the Democratic Peace
2012 interview with Phil Arena.
Summer Reading Recommendation, Mithras Edition
The running through of the bullsSomeone asked me the other day whether I had read any books for fun recently. Caught up as I was in compiling the lit review for one project and writing lectures for an introductory class, I couldn't think of anything--the words "fun" and "reading" at the moment...
“Have foresight and it’s real”: Carly Rae Jepsen And The Problem of Asymmetric Information
The logic of inappropriatenessBelow, Scott Weiner argues that Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe" is an illustration of the dynamics of standard game-theory models, specifically the prisoner's dilemma and stag hunt. Weiner assumes that Jepsen is a rational actor, that both Jepsen and her beau...
Podcasts and Space Hamsters and Shoulder Dragons, oh my!
The very first Duck of Minerva podcast. Featuring PTJ and Dan.
Collective action and the end of the world
Today I gave a lecture on the environment and the dilemmas of collective action in my course on Introduction to International Relations. Despite the best efforts of St. Elinor (the patron saint of political science and my alma mater), I'm still a fairly pessimistic adherent to Mancur Olson's...
Wednesday Afternoon Video
UN as Daddy Day Care
Romney apparently said today "we've been 'turning to the United Nations' to 'raise our kids.'"I don't know if this is true,* but it raises a variety of questions/thoughts:Does the UN have stock in ink? Kids today seem to like tattoos. What is the curriculum include at UN Day Care?Learning How to...
Working Papers
I have bowed to popular demand responded to a small number of requests by creating a page (also accessible via a tab above) to host PDF versions of working papers posted at the Duck of Minerva. The page currently has links to three pieces, including compilations of Stuart J. Kaufman's and Patrick...