In this “Whiskey Optional” episode, PTJ facilitates a conversation among four colleagues from dif…
Episode 23: Being Academic and Pandemic Time
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Recent Posts
Trauma in Common: US Gun Violence and Violence in Armed Conflict
This is a guest post by Betcy Jose, Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Colorado-Denver “This is a really good school, and now it’s like a war zone.” This is how one parent...
Crimea River
One of the most predictable elections is just around the corner: even Google has already proclaimed Putin the winner of the presidential race of March 18th 2018 in Russia. The only marginal hiccup...
Are IR Schools Broken? Nah.
IR program rankings are out in Foreign Policy. Discuss. Steve Walt has a provocative column in the same issue that I'm sure he didn't title that suggests "America's IR Schools Are Broken." The...
More Recent Posts
UN Passes “Right to Water”: Diplomacy everywhere but not a drop to drink.
Yesterday the General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution declaring “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."The vote passed with 122 countries voting and 41 countries abstaining, including...
From QIZ to ROZ
In 2008, after kicking around the idea for a couple of years, the US formally proposed to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) in remote parts of Pakistan (FATA, NWFP, earthquake affected areas of Kashmir, a part of Balochistan province) and all of Afghanistan. The idea was modeled on...
Why states shouldn’t count on Facebook for foreign policy
My colleague, Ben O’Loughlin at Royal Holloway, has written a blog post on the potential consequences of states in the West, particularly the US and UK, increasingly relying on informal social networking of its citizens to promote foreign policy priorities. This would be a move away from the kind...
Kosovo: Countrified!
Just in case you were in suspense, the ICJ has declared that Kosovo's declaration of independence to be legal. Unsurprisingly, the Kosovars are happy, the Serbs are not happy and countries with independence movements are probably a bit more nervous. As the Guardian reports:The ruling is expected...
The Transit Trade Agreement
Although the story has garnered relatively little attention in the US, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) is probably one of the most important developments impacting the medium-term economic and political health of Afghanistan. As the US State Department correctly...
International Justice Day
Today is International Justice Day – at least according to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. (What?! Aren’t you celebrating?!)It comes at an interesting time. The ICC ruled this past week that the charge of Genocide may be included as part of the allegations against Sudanese...
Fatwas and Football…erm… Soccer (or Bend It Like Osama)
I’ve noticed that there has been little ‘quacking’ (ugh, I finally went there) on the blog on the subject of the World Cup. This might be due to the fact that I think pretty much all of us, regardless of location, are North American where ‘soccer’ is a fabulous summer sport if you are a female...
It’s radical, man.
Through the very good King’s of War blog I was directed to a post on Jihadica on the recent emergence of an apparent Al-Qaida affiliated English-language publication called “Inspire”. While the author suggests that this has thrown Western media into a panic, there was very little to actually be...
Turning up the heat on Iran
In case you're like most American academics and are on vacation, you may have missed the fact that America is seriously turning up the heat on Iran. The US has begun squeezing Iran's fuel imports and access to financial markets in response to Iran's refusal to halt its alleged nuclear enrichment...
The Poppy Cultivation Blame Game
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting three weeks ago Hamid Karzai asserted that "foreign circles" were promoting the cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan. Last Saturday, on International Anti-Narcotics Day in Kabul, Karzai once again argued:"First of all, I would like to say that poppy...
Happy Canada Day!
For Canada Day I wanted to post my favourite Canadian short film ever - The Sweater by Sheldon Cohen. It's based on the story by Roch Carrier (who narrates with the most awesome Quebecois accent ever). It's so popular among both Anglo and Franco-Canadians that they printed an excerpt on our $5...
Some NPT Reading… if you’re out of summer novels.
International Affairs – the (increasingly policy oriented) official journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) has published a “virtual” issue of articles on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) dating back to 1968 and going up to the present. It includes one by...