Syria Boehner is backing Obama after this briefing. via CIVIC, the unclassified version of the USG's assessment of the Ghouta attack. Drezner on IR theory in practice. Academica The politics of academic salaries. Via. Rising star Dara Kay Cohen is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for her pathbreaking work as a scholar/public intellectual of wartime sexual violence. Unfortunately article is paywalled. I skipped APSA but learned via...
Displaying Results for ""
The Strategic Signaling Dynamics of Assistant Professor Office Decorating Decisions
Having all read the canonical signaling literature within International Relations, new faculty members in IR are faced with a crucial and excruciating dilemma: how best to decorate their academic office. The following blog post examines this dilemma in detail and is intended to create an inter-university dialogue and research agenda on the issue. While some may say that an office is just a place to put your desk/computer and hold office...
Monday Linkage
Buzzfeed reports Internet memes about Obama's Syrian policy are 10-1 negative. And some are pretty funny. Will Imboden on why professors don't make good presidents. The Arab League has endorsed international action on Syria. Human Rights Watch points out that as norms go, the civilian immunity norm is also worth "reinforcing." The Economist has a write-up about how chemical weapons came to be so much more taboo whose authors actually seems to...
Syria: in Defense of a Broad Military Authorization
Editor's Note: as per my earlier announcement, I am phasing out of the Duck of Minerva. But my blogging won't officially end for around another two weeks. That means that, although administrative inquiries should be sent to other team members, I have not gone cold turkey on the writing front. I remain uncertain as to the wisdom of any kind of US-centered military action in Syria. But if the Obama Administration is going to act, then it needs a...
An Announcement
As many of our readers know, I am the incoming editor-in-chief of International Studies Quarterly, the "flagship journal" of the International Studies Association. My team will begin to take new submissions in October. The full handoff occurs in January of 2014. The scope and nature of the responsibilities involved are inconsistent with an active presence here. Indeed, my time-management and logistical skills are insufficient to support both...
Syria and the problems of compellence
To my mind, the situation in Syria has prompted an incredibly thoughtful debate within the political science community, one that undermines the idea that scholars have become irrevocably detached from policy. Ian Hurd and Charli Carpenter have written excellent pieces on the legality of chemical weapons and military intervention. James Fearon contributed this superb piece on the strategic dilemmas involved in the US response. And once again,...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Galactica (Not) Actual and the Sci-Fi / Sci-Fact / Globalization Intertext
The Chinese state media could perhaps be forgiven for mistaking fictional Battlestar Galactica blueprints for future US fleet schematics this week, given this. This incident has me thinking about Nexon/Neumann's argument regarding the fuzzy relationship between science fiction and ""reality."" (Yes, you did just read scare quotes in scare quotes.) In their Harry Potter and International Relations introduction, they point out that the "reality"...
Friday Afternoon Linkage
Syria updates: The White House's public assessment of last week's chemical weapons attack. Deborah Avant -- Action is not synonymous with intervention. Is there a moral argument for intervention? Tony Lang unpacks some of his comments on various threads hereat Duck below with his own post at Carnegie on the case for punitive action. Given all the discussion surrounding chemical weapons, Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction ed, by Sohail...
FYI: Washington Post and No Paywall for .mil/.gov/.edu
You might not have been aware of this when the Washington Post paywall went up back in June, but there is no paywall if you have a .edu/.mil/.gov email address. Go here to obtain your free access. From the website: By registering with a valid .gov/.mil/.edu email address, you will get free, unlimited digital access to washingtonpost.com whether you are at work, at home or on your mobile device. Not sure what this means for their business model,...
What Do International Law and Norms Say About Burning People Alive?
One line of discussion this past week has been whether it makes any kind of moral sense to think that death by chemical weapon is so much worse than death by "conventional" weapons. Video imagery captured by BBC in the aftermath of another horrific massacre in Syria yesterday throws this into stark relief. At least ten children burned to death and scores others were left with horrifying injuries after a flammable substance was dropped on a...
Intervention to Punish? Or to Protect?
Two kinds of military intervention are being discussed and conflated by political elites (like Nicholas Kristof) and international diplomats. The first is an enforcement operation to punish a state for violating a widespread and nearly universal global prohibition norm against the use of chemical weapons. This is what Kristof refers to in the title of his Times op-ed, "Reinforce a Norm in Syria." The second is a humanitarian operation to...
APSA 2013 Morning Linkage
It's Syria week. Post use of chemical weapons, some sort of intervention looks more likely than not. We are conflicted. Here to help us make sense of this: The intel that suggests the Syrian regime did it, but unclear command and control George Packer on our inner dialogue about why intervention is necessary but folly James Fallows on the folly part Erica Chenoweth on the history of interventions, again emphasizing folly, here and here Jon...