Instead of Dry January, I'm going review free for January after having nearly 80 review requests last year. My New Year's resolution was to have a healthier relationships with reviewing, which had become a part-time, unpaid job (though I recognize that I'm still coming from a place of privilege). Nevertheless, while I didn't accept all of those requests, I did more than 30 last year. My fear is becoming Reviewer 2: the more reviews I do, the...
On 7 January, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents opened fire on Renee Goode, killing her. To be honest, I wanted to write a post on just how sad and terrifying this murder was. How wrong it is that ICE agents are targeting opposition-led cities and using brutal tactics against people suspected of being in the US illegally and protesters, including clergy who take part in protests. How unjustified it was that an ICE agent fired...
In my international relations classes, I encourage my students to not just express their (mostly negative) views of Trump’s foreign policy. I also ask them to reflect on the extent to which Trump’s actions are in line with the history of US foreign policy. Some see the United States as adhering to liberal international norms, with Trump a major break. Others argue the United States was always domineering and aggressive, so Trump shouldn’t be...
My New Year's resolution for 2026 is to somehow make peace with reviewing for journals. Something is amiss, at least for me, but perhaps it reveals a larger problem related to journal and book publishing. I kept a running tally of review requests for 2025. Give or take some error, I had 79 review requests, which includes some R&Rs, book proposals, and a several full books. I'm not including tenure letters. I didn't say yes to all of them,...
And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said;"For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Thanks for reading The Duck of Minerva! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow My family and I go to our church’s Christmas morning service, in addition to the Christmas eve service. It’s a short service, with light attendance, but it helps to remind...
I started this post sort of confessionally. It's been a while since I wrote on the blog. I had started one earlier this year on the destruction of USAID and PEPFAR but redirected my energy into advocacy (such as it was). One reason for my relative absence on the blog is government service. From 2021 to 2023, I was in the Biden Administration serving as a Senior Climate Advisor in the Department of Defense. More recently, my father was in ill...
The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they (Jelena) did not like about the podcast. Brent closes by asking Kyle, who is a LinkedIn rockstar, about the changing landscape of social media and reaching beyond...
Probably not, but the problem isn't impartiality it's the politics of impartiality On November 9th, the director general of The BBC, Tim Davie, along with the head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned. Their resignation was in response to a report published in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, that claimed a BBC News programme, Panorama, edited a speech by President Donald Trump to make it appear as though he encouraged the Capital...
The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean is confusing the MAGA faithful. With rumors swirling of an imminent operation to topple Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, the president’s supporters are asking what happened to “America First”? Tucker Carlson recently remarked it was a “little strange” that the U.S. was telling another country, “we don’t like your leadership — leave or we’ll kill you.” Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon,...
Melissa Willard-Foster is an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont. Her research interests center broadly on international conflict and U.S. foreign policy. She is especially interested in how domestic political pressures cause policymakers to pursue strategies that lead them into costly conflicts. She is the author of Toppling Foreign Governments (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) which surveys 133 cases...
On November 1, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened to end all U.S. assistance to Nigeria and — if he deemed it necessary — launch a military attack against insurgents in the country. As National Public Radio reported: “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to...
I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of “responsibility,” specifically in the context of politics and governance. We live in an age of populism, rising authoritarianism, disinformation, climate change, and the slaughter of civilians in places like Gaza and Sudan. The notions of responsibility associated with the so-called “liberal international order” are all under strain. Most of us, I think, rely on a kind of “duck test.” That is, we...