Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Tobias T. Gibson, an associate professor of political science and security studies at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. In the buildup to President Obama’s speech at National Defense University on May 23, the administration suggested that the speech would clarify US policy on the use of drones in targeted killing. Although the president took pains to describe the limitations set forth by his...
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(Peer/Non) Review
I understand that there's been some recent blog-chatter on one of my favorite hobbyhorses, peer review in Political Science and International Relations. John Sides gets all 'ruh roh' because of an decades-old old, but scary, experiment that shows pretty much what every other study of peer-review shows: Then, perhaps coincidentally, Steve Walt writes a longish post on "academic rigor" and peer review. Walt's sorta right and sorta wrong, so I...
Call for Abstracts: Millennium Conference, 19-20 October, 2013
Millennium. Journal of International Studies Annual Conference "Rethinking the Standard(s) of Civilisation(s) in International Relations" 19-20 October 2013 London School of Economics and Political Science Deadline for abstracts: 7 June, 2013 The theme of this year's conference will focus on the standard(s) of civilisation(s) in International Relations. In recent years, there has been a renewed scholarly interest in the concept of 'the standard...
Thursday Dinklage
If you are like me, you are pining for your next installment of Game of Thrones (and the Memorial Day week off was cruel, though not as cruel as the torment we have seen of late). In the meantime, I give you your weekly dose of Thursday Morning Dinklage. Top stories this week: Steve Walt puts the flawed but necessary peer review process in perspective Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's letter to oft-dead Mokhtar Belmokhtar for his unwillingness...
Wednesday Addams Linkage
A handful of links today, but with content. Dan Drezner discusses China, Thucydides, and the limit of metaphor. It strikes me that Dan's buried the lede here. The question isn't whether Thucydides is applicable to the Sino-American relationship, or whether Tuchman is better, but rather why even Chinese IR professors have adopted the tropes of the Western professoriate. After all, China has its very own history from which to draw analogies, as...
GIGA Comparative Area Studies Award
Some of our readers might be interested in this. Comes with a €2,500 prize. The GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, has established itself as a centre of academic and research excellence in Comparative Area Studies (CAS) with a special focus on politics, international relations and economics. The GIGA has decided to establish an award for Best Article in the Field of CAS. The first awards ceremony will take place on 9–10...
The Science of Teacher Evaluation Manipulation
Hopefully, another semester has come to a close for you and you’re catching up on some much needed research/sleep. After I’ve doled out grades for my students, I usually get a nice big stack of evaluations of my teaching abilities, filled out by those very same students who squeaked by with a “C-“in my class. At my previous university, it was the ONLY way my teaching was evaluated; for better or worse, no senior faculty or peers ever...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
The Hong Kong Duck is back! Not much point in having the "best" military R&D in the world if a potential rival can steal your most important designs. A Law of the Sea symposium (and also) at Opinio Juris on "search and rescue operations." LFC on Kennan's opposition to the Vietnam War. Making the most out of Google dirigibles over Africa. Anti-vaccine themes in popular discourse. Jocelyn Cesari looks at France's "peculiar same-sex marriage...
Taking Liberalism on Intervention Seriously: a 12-Step Program
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Tim Dunne. He is Research Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the University of Queensland and the past editor of the European Journal of International Relations. tl;dr warning: ~2400 words. In a recent lively and provocative post, Stephen Walt argues that liberal imperialists are like ‘neocons’ only more human rights-friendly. They are alike in the sense that both ‘are...
A Good Day To Remember Civil-Military Relations
Today is Memorial Day in this U.S., which leads to all kinds of silly debates about whether this holiday celebrates just the dead killed in America's wars or the Veterans as well since there is Veteran's Day in November (which is Armistice Day everywhere else). The other silly debate that seems to occur around this time is about the draft. Karl Eikenberry (former US general and then Ambassador to Afghanistan) and David Kennedy (retired history...
Memorial Day Linkage
Good mornin' ducks. Happy Memorial Day. The US public today, despite strong support for the military, is the least connected to the institution. Only about 0.5% of the population has served on active duty since 9/11 (roughly 9% of the population served in WWII). The FAS revisits the potentially staggering costs of a war with Iran under different scenarios in the wake of the passage of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act. Is...
Weekend Waterfowl
What's worth reading this weekend? Lots of stuff. Here's a list of a few things, from analytic to oddities. No drones, machetes, or tornados. But it would be silly if none of our resident experts weighed in on recent developments in these domains. Right? If the market expects climate change, why don't those who profess faith in its inerrant wisdom? Notes on "naïve Bayesian classifiers and orders of composition." Kindred W. argues that...