As a new Duck, who (like Cai & Tom) took a while to consider what to blog about, I finally decided - long-winded academic that I am - to write a series of posts on the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign. To this end, I draw on materials for a keynote I just delivered at the University of Surrey's Center for International Intervention's conference on "Narratives of Intervention: Perspectives from North and South" (#cii2015). Here I go: On...
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7 Further Thoughts on Being A Better Job Market Candidate
Amanda in her inimitable style has written some very persuasive guidance about the job market. Let me add a few thoughts about what else you can do to prepare. If you've already been socialized to want an academic job, then you better be ready for a rough slog. Unless you happen to be among the handful of students who get all the attention and plum interviews this job market season, you are likely to get a couple of interviews and at worst...
LGBT Rights: The Perils of Becoming Mainstream
To begin with a confession, I have spent far too long contemplating what to write about as my first post, due in no small part to sharing fellow Guest Duck Tom's nerves about joining such formidable paddling of regular Ducks. However, Wendy's post on human rights having gone mainstream and no longer being revolutionary has given me exactly the push I needed to get started. Specifically, I want to explore Wendy's argument in relation to claims...
4 Things the US Can Do to Reinforce China’s Actions on Climate Change
Sarang Shidore and I have a new paper for the Paulson Institute on what the US can do to encourage China to do more on climate change (in English and Mandarin). China recently reaffirmed its pledge to peak emissions around 2030 and to increase non-fossil energy to 20% by the same year. China also announced a new target to reduce CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (its carbon intensity) by 60 to 65 percent below 2005 levels. How can the US ensure...
Gearing Yourself Up For the Academic Job Market: Waiting
It’s getting to be that time of year again – the time when a fresh not-so-fresh crop of ABDs/PhDs gear-up for the academic job market. I’ve been there – it can make even the most self-assured academic have an existential crisis.[1] As much as I hated being on the job market myself, I absolutely love looking up and providing job market advice for students at Mizzou. I think I received especially good advice when I was a grad student and I think...
Human Rights aren’t Revolutionary? Good!
Recently, Joel Pruce and Doutje Lettinga wrote contributions to openGlobalRights that lamented the non-revolutionary, and I would go so far as to say, anti-revolutionary tone that human rights have come to represent in global and local citizen politics. Both observers note the trend that international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) working on human rights have indeed, become “soft” in their success, earning reproach from critics such as...
Europe, Greece, and the problem of identity: Doing it wrong, social psych edition
The Iran deal is the hot topic now, but since I wrote on the subject recently in another venue, I thought I would address the Greek/Euro crisis. I can’t help but borrow a bit of Josh’s title on the subject because it describes so well the situation in Europe. A lot of people are piling in on the Europeans. While I have not read all the analysis on the crisis, I suspect much of it is economically oriented. Ben Bernanke, for example, thinks...
Thoughts on Subjectivity in Writing about Israel
This is a guest post from Mira Sucharov, an Associate Professor at Carleton University. Particularly in areas of contested politics — controversial policy issues, protracted conflict, clashing narratives, and the like — how much responsibility do authors have to remain unbiased? It’s a problematic word, bias. It’s almost always used either in the context of accusation or in ingratiating self-deprecation. But what if we shift from the term...
Money Talks: Giving Women a Voice on U.S. Currency
The grassroots advocacy campaign, Women on 20s, had a simple request: put a woman on the $20 bill by 2020 to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States. Starting with a list of 15 women candidates, on-line voters cast an electronic ballot in the primary round and chose four finalists: Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller. One month later,...
New Facebook App for the Duck
I'm just testing a new plugin so that posts automatically feed to our Facebook page if that's where you get your news. Don't mind me!
Three Ways to Think about the IMF’s Insistence on Debt Relief for Greece
According to the NY Times, the IMF has refused to participate in any new bailout program for Greece unless Hellas is receiving debt relief. Specifically, says the IMF, this relief must come in one of three ways to be determined by Greece and the Troika: reducing the amount of principal debt to be repaid ("writedowns"), extending the term of the loans (the IMF suggest no payments for 30 years), or interest rate subsidies that would allow Greece...
Institutional Aspects of the Iran Deal
I woke up this morning to read (a few hours behind most of you...one of the few downsides to living in the Pacific Northwest is living behind the news cycle!) about the finalizing of a nuclear deal between the E3/EU+3 and Iran. I'll leave it to others to analyze whether the deal is a good one and whether it will indeed limit the ability of Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Charles Krauthammer hates it. Joe Cirincione loves it. Jeffery Goldberg...