Alongside research and teaching, most tenure-track jobs come with some expectation of service.
Strategic Service on the Tenure Track
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Recent Posts
Professing Abroad: European Academia 101
Willardson and Sullivan’s recent article here provided numerous useful tips for Americans who want to “profess abroad.” They also asked scholars outside the United States to weigh in with thoughts....
Who’s Afraid of China’s Nukes?
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...
We Urgently Need to Support Girls’ Education in Afghanistan
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls....
More Recent Posts
Processing this Election
So this is ostensibly an academic blog, though there is something quite confessional and personal about the blog format. I suspect many readers of the Duck are experiencing what I'm feeling, which is profound heartache over the election results. I've been writing on Facebook and trying to grieve...
What Cholera Tells Us About Global Health
I’ve been marking essays for the past week (two big advantages of Australian academia: November is a spring month, and second semester ends before Halloween), and a lot of my students were writing about the right to health and what it would take to realize it in a meaningful sense. That,...
Analogies in War: Marine Mammal Systems and Autonomous Weapons
Last week I was able to host and facilitate a multi-stakeholder meeting of governments, industry and academia to discuss the notions of “meaningful human control” and “appropriate human judgment” as they pertain to the development, deployment and use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). These two...
Nicaragua: Less Interesting Than Netflix
An American first lady is about to make history. No, not that one. Nicaragua’s November 6 election has drawn few headlines internationally, but this week the New York Times ran a profile on Rosario Murillo, the first lady who appears on this year’s ballot alongside her husband Daniel Ortega. With...
GOTV
I'm on blogging lockdown to GOTV. Back soon.
Why Would Legislators Want to Know Less Rather than More About Military Stuff?
The joy of blogging is that one can come up with whatever title one wants. An agony of academic publishing is that one cannot do the same for articles published in academic journals. However, getting published is the thing, so I am mighty pleased that the first piece of the Phil/Dave/Steve...
Patient Zero and Global Health
With any luck, the myth of Patient Zero being responsible for HIV/AIDS in the US will finally be completely put to rest. Gaétan Dugas may not be a household name for most, but he’s the man who has largely been blamed for HIV/AIDS in the United States. Dugas was a gay French-Canadian airline...
In Cheese We Trust
Mass media in the US often portray Donald Trump as an American version of Putin, if not his puppet. But it makes sense to take a closer look at the essence of Trump’s and Putin’s appeal to their respective populations. Let’s recap three broad topics: foreign policy, domestic policy, and the...
“With Malice Towards None”—A Plea for Cease Fire in the New American Civil War
We Americans try to resolve the civil wars of other countries--sometimes heroically and successfully, sometimes clumsily, sometimes tragically worsening the violence. But these days, peace needs to start at home. We are in a civil war of words in our country. And not just words. The toxic...
Why does IR shun global water governance?
I've been invited to join the cast of guest bloggers here at Duck of Minerva, and as you may have expected, the first thing I thought of was "well, I've made it, and... now what am I supposed to blog about?" On my personal (yet research-focused) blog, I write about a very broad range of topics:...
Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Candidates for WHO Director-General
When I walk down the street, I don’t see signs saying “Tedros for WHO” or “Vote Szócska.” The television and radio airwaves don’t have endless campaign commercials ending with the tagline, “I’m Flavia Bustreo, and I approve this message.” Sania Nishtar does not hold large public rallies in sports...
Are we honest when we write?
The reactions I’ve received to some of my recent op-eds have led me to reconsider the relationship between scholarship and politics, and to question the role of social capital in shaping scholarly opinion. Over the last several months, I have published some pieces that have strayed from what had...