In the wake of the failed attempt at passing a boycott resolution (of Israeli academic institutions) at the recent MLA conference, here are some thoughts. (Readers of the Duck might be aware that last year’s ISA conference saw a modest attempt at bringing a discussion on BDS forward. That proposal was also voted down.) Let’s talk (past each other)! The debate over the academic boycott is often frustratingly unproductive. On one hand, some...
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The Value Alignment Problem’s Problem
Having recently attended a workshop and conference on beneficial artificial intelligence (AI), one of the overriding concerns is how to design beneficial AI. To do this, the AI needs to be aligned with human values, and as such is known, pace Stuart Russell, as the “Value Alignment Problem.” It is a “problem” in the sense that however one creates an AI, the AI may try to maximize a value to the detriment of other socially useful or even...
Twenty-Five (or so) Questions for Senate Hearings on Trump National Security Appointees
I used to be a Senate staffer, and one of the most interesting parts of my job was helping Senators prepare for hearings. If I were a Senate staffer now, here’s hearing questions I’d recommend for President-Elect Trump’s national security nominees, Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State), General James Mattis (Secretary of Defense), and General John Kelly (Secretary of Homeland Security). These questions would serve as starting points for dialogue...
Luis Videgaray, Mexican foreign policy and the open contempt for expertise
For the past few months, I've been observing with horror all the cabinet appointments in the incoming Trump administration and the Theresa May government . As someone who originally did a PhD with the intent to become a career diplomat (and yes, I realize there's a foreign civil service pathway to achieve precisely that goal), to me expertise in top-level agencies was more than a mere technicality: it was a requirement. I wanted a PhD in...
Never Too Early for a Crisis in Civil-Military Relations
To be clear, the latest news is "intra-civilian" but is likely to cross over given the stakes. Remember the old days where the "smart" Bolsheviks left the personnel and other boring issues to Stalin? Yeah, so Stalin staffed the new Soviet government with his guys, and the theorists, well, they did not end up this way. That might be too bloody of an example, but I am not at all surprised that General (retired) Mattis is having tensions with...
ISA Conferences in Trump’s America
In conversations with friends, I quickly realized that the International Studies Association faces some significant problems ahead. The advent of the Trump administration is likely to lead to two kinds of complications: it may be hard for foreign scholars to get visas to attend the conference that scholars may want to boycott conferences that take place in the US if Trump follows through on a variety of things he promised/threatened/tweeted...
A Plea for Cease Fire in the New American Civil War, Part II—The Case for Civility and a Changed Tone of Debate
Consider these two presidential statements: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”—President-Elect Donald Trump’s New Year’s Twitter greeting “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of our affection.”—President Abraham Lincoln, from his first inaugural address Both...
#RussiansDidit
Putin’s annual press conference is a chance for regular citizens to spend 3 hours in a great and rich Russia, where everything is in order and Putin is capable of installing presidents in foreign countries (according to one journalist). In general, the press conference strived to paint a picture of a great power facing some economic problems and who is constantly challenged by other countries (they are probably jealous and/or Russophobic). For...
The Rashomon-ization of the World Health Organization
An event happens. Four different people tell four different versions of what happened. How do we figure out how to move forward? This is a very rough plot summary of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon, but it’s also a pretty accurate description of what is happening to the World Health Organization these days. There’s probably a generation of folks who know Kurosawa because he was name-checked in Rent, but the Japanese director also...
Explaining the Obvious in the Age of Trump
The President-Elect has called for expanding the US nuclear arsenal, not just modernizing it (old warheads may not be good warheads). And when asked about whether this might lead to an arms race, he said woot! Who wins arms races? Arms manufacturers and their stockholders Maybe Ken Waltz (who is already dead) Yeah, that's about it. How about who loses? Each country that is involved The taxpayers Pretty much everyone else. Really? Is it that...
Public scholarship and the challenge of academics’ public engagement in a new global order
I'll confess that post-November 8th, 2016, I spent a large amount of time in despair and unable to write anything coherent on the topics I am most interested in contributing here at the Duck of Minerva. It was hard for me to imagine what the global order would look like with someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named at the helm of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and not despair. But throughout the next few weeks after the US...
WPTPN: The Collapse of Embedded Liberalism in a Time of Populist Nationalism?
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Sean D. Ehrlich, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University who researches international and comparative political economy, trade policy, and democratic institutions. His first book, Access Points, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and he is currently finishing his second book, The Politics of Fair Trade, which is...