Sebastian Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include the historical origins and sociological foundations of security strategies, questions of international order, the modalities of American influence in the world, international monetary relations, and sovereignty. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Political Science Review, International...
Professor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in military history but also LA’s punk rock scene, having a school that doubled as a fallout shelter and his first encounters with eye-opening racial violence. He talks about his decision to go to George Washington University, getting his master’s at the LSE, his brief...
Canadian scholar and politician Michael Ignatieff had a piece in Persuasion recently on the "collapse of liberal internationalism." For Ignatieff to admit this (as one of the strongest proponents of this foreign policy orientation) says a lot. However, he inadvertently gives too much of the argument away. Liberal internationalism is more than military interventions, something both its critics and proponents seem to have forgotten. The fall of...
The US State Department recently released the lists of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) on religious freedom, part of its responsibilities under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRF). The list now includes Russia alongside countries like Burma and China. But one change angered many religious freedom advocates: the removal of Nigeria from the list. IRF advocates claim this is tantamount to abandoning Nigerian Christians, who are...
Willardson and Sullivan’s recent article here provided numerous useful tips for Americans who want to “profess abroad.” They also asked scholars outside the United States to weigh in with thoughts. As a European, I thought I’m a good position to furnish relevant information for those who may be a considering an academic career in Europe. I am from Austria, although my entire academic career has taken place outside my home country. I taught for...
In 1932, John Chamberlain lamented “the unwillingness of the liberal to continue with analysis once the process of analysis had become uncomfortable.” He was critiquing the way Wilsonian liberals drifted into World War One. Socialists and reformist progressives had thought seriously about both the causes of the war and the realistic consequences for American democracy if the nation opted in. Liberals,...
Stephan Sander-Faes is Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Bergen, Norway. He received my Ph.D. from the University of Graz, Austria, in 2011 and obtained the Habilitation in Early Modern and Modern History from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2018. Before moving to Scandinavia in 2020, he taught for ten years at the history departments at the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg, as well as held the István...
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls. Questions remain about how Afghans want to see women’s rights protected. A notorious Afghan proverb often repeated by the Taliban during their prior period of rule states that that ‘women belong either in the home or in the grave.’ Yet our...
Eliza is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where her research explores how governance transpires in spaces where the state is largely absent. She is also a research associate with the Everyday Peace Indicators NGO.
Miranda Pursley is a graduate student at the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University and a research assistant at Everyday Peace Indicators. She has worked extensively in humanitarian and peacebuilding sectors in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on human security, peacebuilding and the conflict-health nexus.
Pamina Firchow is Associate Professor of Coexistence and Conflict at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy, in addition she directs the Everyday Peace Indicators NGO. She has published widely on participatory approaches to design, measurement and evaluation of transitional justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding interventions, including her award winning book, Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and...
Many MA programs at so-called professional schools of international affairs require students to complete a thesis. The purpose of this is not always clear-cut for students in terminal and interdisciplinary degree programs. Having supervised dozens of students in this pursuit, I have a few thoughts about how you can tackle some of the thorny practicalities of thesis writing, and make the experience as beneficial for yourself as possible. Coming...