This scene from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica pilot - the first in which Commander Adama and President Roslin meet - is emblematic of three politically significant conversations underpinning the series. First, what is the appropriate role of the military with respect to the society it presumably exists to serve? Second, who decides? Third, what are the means by which that role is to be executed? All these conversations map broadly onto...
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Wikileaks, the Daily Telegraph and the ‘Special Relationship’
In his Introduction to the recent New York Times collection of materials on Wikileaks, Open Secrets Bill Keller comments on the way in which the newspapers involved shaped the leaks in accordance with their own agendas. Thus, the Guardian gave extensive coverage to leaked US army accounts of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, reflecting their scepticism about the war; the NYT, on the other hand, took the view that they had already given front...
New book – Radicalisation and Media – out now
Routledge has published Radicalisation and Media: Connectivity and Terrorism in the New Media Ecology, co-authored by Akil Awan, Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin. The book presents results from our two-year ESRC-funded project on Radicalisation & Violence, which was awarded the maximum ‘Outstanding’ grade by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2010.Our chief finding, in a nutshell, is that despite the potential connectivity between...
More on Zombies and Drezner
Charli's post raises a number of good points about TIPZ. I've written elsewhere about how much I enjoyed Drezner's presentation about the book, but until today I hadn't confessed that I've taken my enjoyment one step further ... by assigning the book for my summer school Intro to IR course.This will be my first time teaching. I hope assigning TIPZ doesn't mean that it will be my last.Drezner's book, of course, is part of a balanced meal that...
Dan Drezner, Postmodernist
Adam Weinsten has written a delicious appraisal of my friend Dan’s newest book, Theory of International Politics and Zombies. I think he’s mostly spot-on, particularly his genealogy of Dan’s position in the discipline and his implication that TIPZ represents Dan having the last laugh on the Chicago Department of Political Science and its stale, antiquated notions of what matters in statecraft:This is the university that gave us supply-side...
Random Thought
Modern realist theory contains no arguments (of significance) absent in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli or Francisco Guicciardini.
Preview of an immanent online symposium
Here's a quick heads-up about something that will be concluding here -- and over at The Disorder of Things -- in a couple of weeks:"This is the third in a series of posts by several of us at The Disorder Of Things on Patrick Thaddeus Jackson‘s The Conduct Of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. Paul started things off with his post setting up Jackson’s methodology of...
“State” Multiculturalism
This is England?I woke up this morning to discover that apparently “state multiculturalism” has failed. According to Prime Minister David Cameron:...when a white person holds objectionable views, racist views for instance, we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious frankly – frankly, even fearful – to stand up to them. The failure, for instance, of some to...
ISA-NE Call for Papers
International Studies Association-NortheastAnnual Conference4-5 November 2011Providence BiltmoreProvidence, RI, USASubmission deadline: 20 May 2011The annual conference of the International Studies Association-Northeast (ISA-NE) will be held 4-5 November 2011 at the Providence Biltmore in Providence. Rhode Island.ISA-NE invites paper and panel proposals on any subject related to international studies, broadly defined. Topics might include (but...
F for the Professor?
Have you heard about a new study, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, authored by academics Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and released by University of Chicago Press? Their research question should be of interest to most of the people reading this blog: "are undergraduates really learning anything once they get" to college?**The results are disturbing: Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data,...
For the Good Folks at Registan.net
They don't call him "Starrman Bashi" for nothing. The "Professor of Repression" also had a nice ring to it.
The standard foreign office response in a time of crisis…
Snow day again -- I watched Al Jazeera, read up on the current US debates about whether or not (and how) to support the democratic revolution in Egypt, and then turned to watch one of my favorite episodes of Yes Minister, "A Victory for Democracy." Classic and informative -- on so many levels. The real fun starts at the 4:00 minute mark and runs for the duration: You can watch the whole episode -- parts 1 and 3 here and here. It's a great break.