"This is what winning looks like" I have to confess, I was late to watch "Zero Dark Thirty" (ODT). I read a handful of reviews and blogs about the movie, had arguments with friends about its message, and even wrote it off completely--all weeks before I bothered to watch it. I wasn't interested in watching another American war movie, nor was I keen to see the lengthy torture scenes I had read about in the reviews. I figured I already knew...
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Academic Freedom and the Challenges of Going Global: LSE Cancels Conference in UAE.
Apparently, the Arab Spring will not come to the UAE this weekend. Planners of an LSE conference on the implications of the Arab Spring set for this weekend in UAE have cancelled the event after efforts by senior UAE officials to control the content. From the BBC: A senior LSE academic told the BBC he had been detained at the airport in Dubai on Friday. Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, who is the co-director of the Kuwait programme at LSE, said...
Note to Bahrain: Release Prisoners and Provide More Social Services
Thanks to a very awesome grad student of mine, I just realized that last week marked the second anniversary of the start of the Bahrain uprising. Fueled by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, citizens of this small and very beautiful island state took to the streets to demand political changes. For two years, the protests have not completely dissipated but haven’t escalated to the point of civil war either. What explains this continued state of...
Friday Morning Linkage
Here's the round-up: The United Nations refuses to pay compensation to victims of the cholera it brought to Haiti. Not really a surprise. Read Jonathon Katz's The Big Truck That Went By. Joshua Landis' survey of the debate over counting casualties in Syria. There is a strong sense that the numbers are under-reported. Megan Price and her team at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group are still analyzing the numbers presented in their...
“It is the Grating Habit of Partisans on the Winning Side to Tell the Losers How They Might Have Done Better”
And thus Bret Stephens lambasts Democrats for daring to tell the GOP to moderate its foreign policy. Stephens' recipe for "Getting the GOP's Groove Back"? Obama foreign policy, but with an assist from the Resolve Fairy on Iran. I'm not kidding. If you have a Foreign Affairs subscription, you can check it out for yourself. The sad thing is that once you wade through Stephens' boilerplate invocation of supply-side economics (it works! Kennedy cut...
The New Grand-Strategic Divide? A Response to Thomas Wright
We should stop using the term “isolationism” to describe policies tht entail a more restrained U.S. role in the world.
Legal Prostitution: what can we learn from the empirical record?
No, this isn't one of those posts where we go all "Monkey Cage" on our readers and pimp (sorry) promote political-science research, but rather a "Dan is befuddled, perhaps readers might help" kind of thing. In other words, I make no effort to answer the question of the title. The post is an extended version of the question itself. In one of those strange synergies associated with social media, I've seen a fair number of things about...
Update: UWE Response to My Letter
I have an update for those interested in the decision by the University of the West of England to shutter its Politics and IR programs. Last night, I sent the following message to UWE Vice Chancellor Steven West: 19 February 2013 Dear Vice Chancellor West, I learned today that the University of the West of England is seriously considering a decision to close its Politics and International Relations programs. I believe that would be a serious...
2013 Awards Update
I apologize for my radio silence on the OIAS awards since we announced the finalists. The winners are being selected by a panel of judges for each award. Each panel is composed of staff from the Duck of Minerva and "outside experts." The latter have PhDs in political science and are "blog savvy," meaning that they either maintain blogs and/or are long-term consumers of academic blogs. Each judge is providing a "top two" ranking directly to me....
Wednesday Linkage
• Belusconi offers tax rebates. Opponents accuse him of seeking to "buy votes." The letter came in an official-looking envelope, headed: "Important notice: reimbursement of IMU 2012." "The refund will be available either through a transfer into your bank account, or to you personally at the counter of the post office," the letter said, according to Reuters. It was sent to millions of households in Sicily, Veneto, Campania and Lombardy - key...
Save IR and Politics at University of the West of England
Earlier today, I received an email alerting me to the fact that the University of the West of England’s Academic Board supported a recommendation from the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group to close all international relations and politics programs. Apparently, the plan is to refocus the university (one of the ten largest in England) on skills-based learning and vocational courses, which essentially means that arts and social sciences have no...
Arguments for a New STAR TREK Series
Because "53 reasons" is just plain stupid, and increments of five are basically listicles, I provide three. 1. We are heading straight for maximum Star Wars saturation. Despite its ham-handed didacticism, Star Trek's values are far preferable to those of Star Wars. We cannot allow aristocratic fantasy to bury republican virtue. 2. JJ Abrams is a pretty good action director, but he doesn't seem to understand the intellectual possibilities of...