Vice President Pence recently pressured the US agency for international development (USAID) to appoint a special liaison to Iraqi Christians. This may not capture the same headlines as the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination fight or the new NAFTA, but it could have significant—and unexpected—implications for Middle East stability. Pence’s move was part of a year-long fight over US aid policy towards Iraq’s religious minorities, with several...
The school year is off to a great start, and we wanted to thank our previous slate of guest Ducks and welcome some new guests. Thanks to all of our guests from last year. Lisa Gaufman and Dillon Tatum are staying on as guests, and we are delighted that our partnership with Bridging the Gap will continue with the BtG channel. We also have a fantastic slate of new guests Ducks including Jill Hazelton, Peter Henne, Sahar Khan, Luke Perez, and Kai...
This post comes from Dr. Fabiana Sofia Perera, Assistant Research Fellow at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and a 2016 alumna of Bridging the Gap's New Era Workshop. Defense Secretaries from the countries of the western hemisphere will convene in Cancun, Mexico next month to talk about the most pressing issues facing defense and security institutions in the Americas. The biannual meeting presents an important...
There is a spat of ecumenical proportions brewing in the Eastern hemisphere: Patriarch Krill of Russia stopped praying for the Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. The reason for that is simple: the patriarch of Constantinople is rumored to consider granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church an autocephalous status that would potentially carve out a third of Russian Orthodox Church curacies severely damaging Moscow’s status as the third Rome*...
I woke up to find a piece that castigates the academic world for being ignorant about the armed forces. My reaction was: I love how broad this brush is. "I talked to some folks who are profs and they say some dumb stuff, so let's suggest that this is a broader thing" Confirmation bias much? https://t.co/jWhcaniD2B — Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) September 20, 2018 Tom Ricks, who posted this questionable piece, pushed back: I'm throwing a...
Great opportunity to donate in memory of a beloved scholar of African politics. The Lee Ann Fujii Minority Fellows Program Travel Grants will help up to 15 scholars from underrepresented backgrounds get to APSA each year, 2019-2023. Details: #APSA2018 pic.twitter.com/0eUgcg3vsQ — Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) August 31, 2018 This is a guest post by Lahoma Thomas, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of...
The fall semester is upon us, and with APSA in the rear view window, we’d like to bring on a new slate of guest Duck bloggers to continue to bring IR-related insights to bear on important real world problems, to explore important debates in the academy, and to do some professional introspection. We’re especially keen on having gender balance and increasing representation of voices from beyond North America and other important perspectives. Here...
This is a guest post by Nicholas Chan, a lecturer at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. Follow him on Twitter at @nickdotchan Three years after the Paris Agreement (PA) was agreed, 2018 has been termed the year where “it’s time to figure out the fine print.” The ‘Paris Agreement Work Programme’, due to be finalized at December’s COP24 climate change conference in Katowice, Poland, requires that a range of...
In the run-up to the American Political Science Association Conference in Boston this week, some political scientists are protesting the award of the Hubert Humphrey prize to former National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. The award, which includes a cash prize of $1,000, is given each year "in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist." Rice earned her PhD in political science from University of Denver and served in the...
This is a guest post by Andreas Pacher who initiated the Observatory of International Relations (OOIR), a website which tracks Political Science and IR journals to continually list their latest papers. Follow OOIR on Twitter: @ObserveIR. You may have noticed that the Impact Factors of IR journals are sometimes followed by a statement that it ranks “nth out of 85 journals in the category ‘International Relations’”. For instance, International...
This is a guest post by Betcy Jose and Peace Media. Betcy Jose is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Denver. She tweets @betcyj. Peace A. Medie is a Research Fellow in the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy at the University of Ghana. She tweets @PeaceMedie. Their work on civilian self-protection can be found here and here. On July 25, 2018, DAESH launched a surprising and brutal 12 hour offensive in Sweida,...
Tis the season for academic navel gazing so here are some things I've learned the hard way. This is primarily a piece for folks on the tenure track. I know that I come at this from a position of immense privilege as a tenured professor at an R1, layered by being a white guy. I know that some of the advice I'm going to give won't be all that helpful to folks in more vulnerable positions as adjunct faculty, but I still think this advice needs to...