Hello Ducks... here are your Monday links... Theory Talks #63 interviews Siddharth Mallavarapu on "International Asymmetries, Ethnocentrism, and a View on IR from India." Oliver Stuenkel asks whether Intra-BRICS cooperation can advance amid economic gloom? Shanthie Mariet D'Souza gives India four scenarios for Afghanistan in the run up to the 2014 elections. Corey Robin asks whether Bob Dahl really did define politics as “The process that...
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Nuland: Comic misunderstanding?
Have Duck readers been following the latest glitch in U.S.-European relations? Josh mentioned it in his recent roundup. Here's how the Washington Post explained the story: On Thursday, a video was posted on YouTube in which Victoria Nuland,, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, disparagingly dismissed European Union efforts to mediate the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine by bluntly saying, “F--- the E.U." On Friday, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel,...
Classroom Activity: Interpreting Regression Results
Editor's note: this post originally appeared on my personal blog. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've decided to try "flipping the classroom" this semester, meaning I'm posting the lectures online and using class time mostly for activities that reinforce core concepts and create incentives for students to keep up with the lectures from week to week. Look below the fold for a description of the second activity, which concerns the...
Friday Nerd Blogging
Fans must content themselves with some trivia this week. Here are "15 Things [Most People] Don't Know About Game of Thrones."
Thursday Linkage: Sochi Winter Olympics Edition
This Duck spent the day in the car en route to the Brazilian consulate in Houston to get visas for a summer field course so I'm running behind in my linkage for the week. In the car, I had the amazing experience of listening to an audioversion of The Idealist, Nina Munk's magisterial account of Jeff Sachs and the Millennium Villages Project. I'm moderating a conversation with Ms. Munk on Monday. For those of you who follow debates in...
OAIS Blogging Awards: Last Call to Vote
Voting closes tomorrow at 5pm EST for this year's OAIS Blogging Awards. If you haven't already done so, now is the time to cast your ballot. You can review the nominees and get more information here. Once the votes are in, we'll identify the finalists for each category and turn the process over to our panel of judges. We'll announce the winners at the OAIS Blogging Awards and Reception at ISA Annual Convention on Thursday, March 27.
Book Review: “Making Human Rights a Reality”
My students and I have just read Emilie Hafner-Burton's grand treatise on the human rights regime, Making Human Rights a Reality. Following her earlier empirical studies, this is a sweeping descriptive appraisal of how human rights law works and why it works so poorly, coupled with a level-headed argument about strategies that human rights champions or "stewards" might adopt to achieve concrete improvements in human rights performance by...
Tenure Letters: To Sling or to Shoot Arrows?
This piece has been making waves in the academic world (for a much better set of recommendations, see this piece). It gets much attention because it both identifies a real problem and then suggests awful ways to handle it. The latter is easier to deal with quickly. However, first let me be clear--what I am talking about here are the letters that universities ask outside scholars to write as they evaluate candidates for tenure and/or...
Classroom Activity: Simplification is not a Sin
Editor's note: this is a slightly modified version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. As I mentioned here, I've decided to try "flipping the classroom" this semester, meaning I'm now posting the lectures online and using the class time this frees up for Q&A and for activities meant to reinforce core concepts and create strong incentives for students to keep up with the lectures from week to week. These activities...
What is Cyber Hygiene?
I was struck this morning to read a post on a Cyber Security forum with a link stating the "Super Bowl was Hacked!" Clicking on the link lead to this write up and picture. I can't think of better visualization of the need for basic cyber hygiene. The cyber security industry kills many trees and wastes much bandwidth on discussions of cyber offensive and defensive strategies. Yet, if we can't practice basic cyber hygiene, what is the point?...
Monday Morning Linkage
Howdy. Here are your Monday links... A useful graphic on which countries are taking Syrian refugees. The best tribute to Pete Seeger I saw came from Outlook India, which has audio of Seeger singing Gandhi's "Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram" and Indians singing "Hum Honge Kamyaab" ("We Shall Overcome"). The NY Times' India Ink explains "Why the US Embassy Releases Pollution Data in Beijing but not in New Delhi." Al Jazeera has a retrospective on the...
How the Blogosphere Helps Junior Scholars?
Dear Readers, In this post, I would like to focus on the few ways in which the blogosphere and social media more generally help junior scholars. I will use myself as an example. It is not easy for me to reach out to senior colleagues and start a dialogue. I find it much easier to respond to a blog post they publish than to email them out of the blue. Right before last ISA, I contacted a senior scholar about his guest post on the Duck. He...