Over the last week we've had an excellent post by Cynthia Weber on queer theory and the forms of academic disciplining and bullying that take place on the website Political Science Rumors, as well as a interesting (and surprisingly convincing) piece by Steve Saidman on why he participates on the website. At first thought, the question of whether to participate on PLSI rumors or not seems pretty simple to me. In fact, a better question might be,...
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Classroom Activity: Commitment Problems
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on commitment problems. The lecture focused in particular on how the anticipation of future shifts in power can create incentives for preventive war. After walking them through a formal model fleshing out the argument, I then discussed the role of preventive motives in the US Civil War and showed them that interstate wars have occurred more often historically when...
So You Want to be a Liberal Arts College Professor: Is there a Future for the Liberal Arts?
Last year I wrote a post titled “So You Want to be a Liberal Arts Professor.” At the time, I promised a series of pieces on the subject, but then my job as a liberal arts college professor got in the way…. Oh well. Among other things, I got mired in a faculty committee examining the future of the liberal arts, developing our college learning goals, and revamping the college’s distribution and graduation requirements. Throughout the process, we...
Crimea is not a Realist story
[Note: This is a guest post by Jarrod Hayes, assistant professor of international relations at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, Constructing National Relations: US Relations with India and China was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.] Jeffrey Stacey has already discussed the issue in Crimea with alacrity, as have his interlocutors in the comments section. My...
Report: US Drone Casualty Estimates Are Likely Too Low
Defense analyst Lawrence Lewis has authored an unclassified report critically analyzing the metrics used to estimate civilian casualties from drone strikes.* Lewis is an analyst and field representative for the Center for Naval Analysis, which published the report today. He has led numerous projects on operational effectiveness for DOD, including the Joint Civilian Casualty Study in support of General Petraeus, and knows of what he speaks. He...
Why I Participate At Political Science Rumors
The first rule of the internet is not to read the comments for any op-ed one posts. Why? Because the cover of anonymity allows people to say awful stuff. Of course, Twitter amply demonstrates that people will say awful things on the internet even when one can be clearly identified. Anyhow, over the past several years, a series of websites have been gathering spots for both aspiring and experienced political scientists to exchange in rumors...
Thursday Linkage
As we hurtle to the end of the semester, here are some stories for the week that caught my eye: Felix Salmon on why wonk bloggery is the future of journalism From Kyle Dropp and co-authors, Americans who can't find Ukraine on the map are more likely to support intervention there. What does this say about low information voters? Kim Yi Dionne and coauthor review the strange raid of a US-funded AIDS effort by Ugandan authorities as part of the...
Number Crunching the ISA Twittersphere
Felix Haas has written a monster blog post over at Bretterblog with interesting descriptive statistics from the #ISA2014 hashtag. Among other fascinating points: 11% of IR scholars at the conference tweet, compared to only 2% of the global population The most popular tweet of the conference contained the Sheraton lobby wifi password Most prolific tweeter: Annick Wibben Number of tweets sent by Laura Seay while simultaneously participating on...
An Academic Woman’s Rant of the Week: Professor vs. Teacher and Dr. vs. Mrs.
Like any good protestant preacher, I’ve decided to start a multi-week series where we can examine a topic in depth from multiple angles.[1] My chosen topic: women in academia. This is a topic that has been written on extensively in peer-reviewed articles and on the blogosphere (see The Monkey Cage's wonderful discussion for a recent summary). However, to my knowledge, most of those writing on the topic have been senior: the perspective of a...
You Make My Work (Im)Possible: Reflections on Professional Conduct in the Discipline of International Relations
This is a guest post by Professor Cynthia Weber, Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex Five months ago, ‘Michaela’ posted this query on the website Political Science Rumors in a thread called ‘a good place to study queer IR?’ am currently a MA student looking to move into a PhD program in the next 2 years. I am interested in studying queer IR and was wondering if you can recommend some good programs. I'm more...
Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement: Some Analytical Questions*
(This is a solicited guest post by University of Chicago's Eric Hundman, who is currently conducting fieldwork in Taiwan. Also follow him on Twitter.) At around 7:30pm on Tuesday, March 18, around 300 protesters scaled the fence around Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s equivalent of a parliament) and occupied the building. The protesters then barricaded themselves inside the legislative chamber and began organizing, with the help of...
Political Science without a Net
Marc Maron, on his popular WTF Podcast, made an offhand remark that he does not prepare for his comedy performances. He feels that preparing is for cowards, that you need to be ready and willing to fail in your work since there is a fine line between a unique achievement and total failure. Skirting this line led him to ruin many times in his career, but it has also led him to the transcendent place he is at now. He has reached the heights of...