by Dan Nexon | 11 May 2012 |
The Monkey Cage is engaged in a full-court press in defense of NSF political-science grants. The cause, of course, is Representative Jeff Flake's (successful) amendment to axe funding for political-science research. Although I never have received, and probably will never receive, an NSF grant, I find Flake's denigration of social-science research troubling. Much worse are attempts to micro-manage the NSF. The whole point of this kind of...
by Robert Kelly | 11 May 2012 | Featured
This genre is growing on the Duck, so here are are a few more thoughts before you take the PhD plunge. Enjoy your last summer to read as you choose, without following a peer reviewer or a syllabus. Such lost bliss… Generally speaking, yes, I like being an academic. I like ideas and reading. I like bloviating at length. The sun is my enemy, and exercise bores me. I would really like to be a good writer/researcher. Including grad school, I’ve...
by Dan Nexon | 11 May 2012 |
On a wall outside of the Intercultural Center auditorium. Make of it what you will.
by Dan Nexon | 10 May 2012 |
Some years ago I finally got around to reading Goodrick-Clarke's The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Reading Goodrick-Clarke's description of various forms of esotericism and mysticism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and specifically Blavatsky's Theosophy movement, drove home the degree to which H.P. Lovecraft's writings -- and, by extension, basically all modern horror --...
by Robert Kelly | 9 May 2012 | Featured
<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('000902d5-7b3b-4c9c-b77d-2a0f6080ed33'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-xHchAHKaTKA/T6nywRxtfXI/AAAAAAAAALg/2rX2oBbeHk4/video6cf4c2596412%25255B7%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Greatest Movie Line Ever on Academia: “How the Social Scientists Brought Our World to the Brink of Chaos” Hah!If academia’s...
by Dan Nexon | 8 May 2012 |
Despite Adam Elkus's prodding, I avoided participating in the first-round beat down of Paul J. Saunders supremely stupid essay, "Giving Realists a Bad Name." That's okay, because Daniel Larison, Dan Drezner, and others piled on.Saunders's subsequent response to Drezner does make a very good point: just because you are a realist doesn't mean you don't have to care about "values." Realism writ large is not logically equivalent to Meineke's...
by Charli Carpenter | 8 May 2012 | Featured
I am concluding a semester-long experiment in incorporating a theory/policy writing simulation of sorts into my doctoral level "Human Security" seminar. This struck me as important both because my own doctoral training left me unprepared for writing for practitioners, and because the divergent socialization of academic professionals into scholarly versus non-scholarly writing has been cited as a key impediment to successful communication with...
by Steve Saideman | 8 May 2012 |
I guess I should not be surprised at this news that the Pentagon did not cooperate with Marvel Studios to make The Avengers movie (h/t to Jacob Levy for pointing this piece out to me). After all, immediately after seeing the movie, I enumerated the many principal-agent problems illustrated in the movie, and the military abhors P-A problems. It turns out that the Pentagon found unrealistic not the part about the Norse Gods, the large green...
by Cliff Bob | 7 May 2012 |
Another Sunday, another military puff-piece from the NY Times. Yesterday's issue promoted the idea that America is threatened by a drug trafficker-terrorist network emanating from Central America. The source of this idea is--no surprise--the U.S. military, our fearmongers in chief. But the Times unquestioningly reported their statements as front page news, as part of a longer article about the new Central American wars such propaganda is...
by Rodger Payne | 5 May 2012 |
The Heartland Institute, a conservative think-tank well-known for its skepticism about climate change, placed the above digital billboard for 24 hours along the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago this past week. For $200, they bought a lot of publicity.Apparently, though now cancelled, the planned ad campaign was going to place similar billboards with the same message bearing photos of Osama bin laden, Charles Manson, and Fidel Castro.Subtle,...
by Cliff Bob | 4 May 2012 | Featured
My new book, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics, has recently been published by Cambridge University Press. It is available on Kindle for $12.10, Nook for $14.74, and as a paperback for $21.59. For a free chapter, chapter excerpts, contents, and more please visit my website. The Global Right Wing explores the vibrant world of conservative activism. It examines how America's National Rifle Association (NRA), its...
by Charli Carpenter | 4 May 2012 |
I was shocked, shocked to learn that Bloggingheads.tv advertised my discussion with Rob Farley over gender and race in Foreign Policy / Game of Thrones by promoting only the clip where I discussed "nudity":Since that clip was not much more than a throwaway comment in a wide-ranging discussion, yet in fact touched on one of the most, er, much-trumpeted aspects of the show so far, I thought I'd take the time to expound a little bit since after...