In 1932, John Chamberlain lamented “the unwillingness of the liberal to continue with analysis once the process of analysis had become uncomfortable.” He was critiquing the way Wilsonian liberals drifted into World War One. Socialists...
Women in academia do not enjoy an easy ride. Even though “manel” count at this year’s ISA was much lower, there is still work to be done. Not to mention the recent scandal about the epidemic levels...
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Simon Frankel Pratt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. His research is on institutional...
There’s a lot of turmoil in global health governance these days, and it looks like it’s only getting more chaotic. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is hitting the reset...
Jim Hu of blogs for industry is putting together a "virtual faculty club" that includes a useful "Virtual College of Liberal Arts." He apparently only includes regular faculty members who use their real names, so grad students like Bill Petti are not included.The Political Science faculty,...
Cross-posted on my blog.Much of blogtopia has been talking about the sobering article by Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer in Sunday's Washington Post. I don't have time to comment right now -- the kids actually start school Tuesday (!) -- but the piece is definitely worth a complete read. The...
Cross-posted on my blog.On June 27, I blogged about Thomas Friedman's old claim that "no two countries that have McDonald's have ever fought a war since each got McDonald's."That was falsified by the NATO/US bombing of the former Yugoslavia.Now, it seems, Friedman's new book, The World is Flat...
This is cross-posted on my blog.Years ago, I sometimes read the usenet group rec.sport.baseball. Many of the posters on that board used a word that I hadn't seen before, but it was one I soon embraced: "mediocy." According to baseballthinkfactory.org, the word was coined "by Dave Kirsch and...
On his relatively new blog, The Useless Tree, Williams College political scientist Sam Crane recently posted an excellent entry entitled, "The Sad Lesson of Iraq." Crane is an expert on Asian affairs, and thus logically discusses the wisdom imparted by Chinese military strategist Sun Tsu.However,...
My family is relocating (temporarily) to Columbus, and the move won't be over with for at least a week. In consequence, I won't be posting here very much. The other members of the collective will, I hope, make up for my absence.I hope everyone's having a good August. August may be a "slow news...
Peter Jennings, long-time anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, died yesterday. Granted, he hadn't been on the air since April because of complications stemming from his treatment for lung cancer, but his death -- along with the retirements of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather as the news anchors of NBC and...
Cross-posted on my blog.Last week, I blogged about the G-SAVE: global struggle against violent extremists. Reportedly, the Bush administration decided to toss aside the "war on terror" for this new "catchphrase." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been using some variant of SAVE for over a...
From the AP:Some who don't approve of Bush's job performance admire him personally."I think he tries to be likable and I think he's somewhat honest," said Cindy Bashura, a Democratic-leaning resident of Seymour, Conn. "He tries to do what he thinks is right, but sometimes I think he takes the...
Dan Drezner posts on one of the best science-fiction series that was ever cancelled before its time... and the upcoming movie. Firefly, for those of you who don't know, was a Joss Whedon series in which he took the western influences in space opera (Roddenberry described Star Trek, after all, as...
Cross-posted on my blog.The point of Dafna Linzer's front page story in Tuesday's Washington Post (August 2) is clear from the headline: "Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb." A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key...
Some thoughts on Chirol's "History of Empires II". I'll state my basic concern up front: Chirol's "second-generation empires" sound pretty much like what international-relations (and other) scholars call "hegemonic systems." There are a number of good overviews of hegemonic-stability theory...