Academica Prominent academic Stephen Hawking has weighed in on a public debate. Humanitarian Disarmament Chicago PhD Candidate John Stevenson writes in Slate about why ceasefires don't protect civilians. Momentum last week towards a treaty abolishing nuclear weapons: Mexico leads charge. Anti-killer-robot campaigners on the new Robocop. Human Rights and Armed Conflict UNHCHR's report on North Korea denounces human rights condition in country....
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A Fan Letter to Nicholas Kristof.
Dear Mr. Kristof, Since you're getting so much hate mail from political scientists this week, I thought I'd send you a fan letter. I teach international relations at University of Massachusetts. I am an avid reader of your columns, especially on human rights advocacy. You have put issues like fistula on the global agenda. You put privileged young people in touch with global issues. You are a master at boiling down complex issues to accessible...
Monday Morning Links
Good morning. Here are your links ... Bilal Sarwary at the BBC gives us a glimpse of Helmand province that is rarely seen. He writes, "This type of checkpost is the real front line. There are poppy fields on one side, police headquarters on the other and constant fights with the Taliban." So much for Operation Khanjar having made any impact at all... Arshia Sattar at the WSJ defends Wendy Doniger against Penguin's capitulation to censorship...
Denying Tenure and Moving On
For some people this has been a very good month, for others, no so much. Tenure (and by proxy promotion) is the thing most American Professors strive for, desire, believe is the crowning moment in their careers.* I will say for one, tenure denials, whether justified or outrageous – happen. Our careers are determined by many things but tenure is not one of them. It is a process filled with problems, but important nonetheless. For me, there...
Academic Family Tree
Almost exactly three years ago, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson blogged "Who’s Your Grand-Advisor? Crowdsourcing an IR lineage map" at the Duck. Patrick was searching for an academic family tree website with a focus on international relations: I did a little digging and thus far have been completely unable to locate something that I would have thought that someone would have already assembled: an online searchable database that mapped adviser-advisee...
The Great Poli Sci Portfolio
In the dustup produced by Nick Kristof, one of the basic misperceptions keeps being repeated--that the American Political Science Review is not influential or readable enough. The job of the APSR is not to be read by policy-makers but by political scientists. Really? Yes. Let me explain. The academic journals have their place in the profession just as those aimed at outreach do. Why have academic journals? So that political scientists can...
Some Personal Reflections on Social Media and Tenure
Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. As some of you may know, I'm up for tenure this year, and it's not going to work out. I don't want to get into the details of anything that ought not be discussed in public, but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts that some of you might find to be of interest. First, to the best of my understanding, my presence on social media played little to no role in this decision. So if...
NYT and Poli Sci Public Engagement
The ISA mess is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Nicholas Kristof has written a piece in his NYT column that "addresses" the controversy. The problem is that the column is out of date. Not just in focusing on the ISA proposal that has been beaten back by the forces of reason (that would be me and other bloggers?), but that other canards get lumped in. While some noted bloggers have been denied tenure, it is highly unlikely that their...
The Pivot to Asia: Some Tough Questions
The so-called Pivot to Asia, or "rebalance" in official parlance, has been one of the Obama Administration's signature strategic moves on the global chessboard. But for all the serious engagement of the Pacific Rim countries, the core of the pivot has always been about China and responding to its rise as a regional and proto global power. U.S. intentions aside, China has accused the U.S. of using the pivot as a form of neo-containment...
Classroom Activity: Thinking Strategically
This third activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture on game theory (slides). Look below the fold for details. First, I asked them to fully characterize the optimal strategy for player 1 in the following modified centipede game, assuming player 2 adopts their optimal strategy. That second part is important, and I stressed it quite a bit. I particularly made sure it was clear that I wasn't asking them to imagine that they...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Winter Olympic Edition
I was trying to find a good Star Wars-Valentine's Day mash up and failed. And then I thought, what would Brian Boitano do? [NFSW-words] Old oldie but a goodie. Enjoy the games and enjoy the excuse to eat lots of chocolate and smooch them if you got 'em.
Thursday Linkage – China’s Environmental Impact Edition
I came across this news story which underscored to me the challenges that the Chinese government has in confronting their air quality problem, what I previously likened to rapidly turning a supertanker. An official Chinese study described Beijing air as "barely suitable" for living, the second worst of 40 global cities. In response to last year's "airpocalypse" and on-going concerns that pollution may constitute a threat to regime stability,...