In the past couple of days, an academic issue has played out on twitter: are advisers doing a disservice to students and to the creation of knowledge by warning them off of topics that are deemed less relevant, less in the moment? Damned if I know. On the one hand, I have heard plenty of tales of former/current students elsewhere that say that they were interested in a topic, but their adviser told them it was not so relevant or interesting,...
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The Return of Geopolitics
Geopolitics has returned with a vengeance. The end of the Cold War wrought a moment in which there was no credible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. Russia was seemingly fatally weakened, and China was not yet the economic powerhouse it would become. By the late 2000's, Russia, with power and resources concentrated in the hands of Vladimir Putin, was newly assertive in its near abroad and attempted to restore its authority over...
Turning the Lights Out on American Leadership
What a time to be alive. By some accounts, we are witnessing a power transition between the United States and China, with the United States voluntarily relinquishing its claim of global leadership despite having a sizable advantage in hard power over all of its rivals. Evan Osnos, who spent many years in China writing for the New Yorker, has a provocative piece that sums up his view of Trump’s foreign policy one year in, “Making China Great...
Size Doesn’t Matter
Any woman would tell you that. What matters is what you do with it and whether you know how to use it. Whatever Brobdingnagian thing you’ve got going on there, it’s way more important to have a game plan and understand the sweet spots you need to target. Otherwise, both parties may come away less than satisfied from the encounter. I am talking, of course, about the nuclear arsenal size and the ever-lasting dick-measuring contest that is...
The top 5 issues in International Politics for 2018
2017 was not a great year for international politics. The sentence I heard the most during conferences and other academic gatherings was that “the global order is in crisis.” Granted. It all started in 2016 with the victory of Trump, Brexit and the No to the Peace Agreement in Colombia. Nationalist ideologies have nothing but grown in 2017, when the victories of Marine Le Pen in France and of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands all of a sudden...
Happy New Year
If anybody is planning to collude with some Russians for New Year's (but not in order to swing an election), I compiled a brief checklist. Originally, I wanted to take apart an article from a prestigious newspaper that described "a Christmas encounter with a Russian soul", but then I decided against it. After all, if you don't buy "the case for colonialism", then you probably also won't think that "Russians do not share the ethical heritage of...
UFOs and the Hyperreal
On Saturday, the New York Times ran an investigative story that revealed a few significant facts about the US’s programs to study UFOs. There were some interesting findings in the article (and citations/paraphrases below are from the article, which can be found here): A 22 million dollar program called “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification” was operated at DoD from 2007 to 2012—and, in fact, the program continues today without an official...
Us Too
We knew it was coming and here it is. An open source spreadsheet designed by The Professor Is In blog's Karen L. Kelsky for the purpose of collecting up stories of sexual harassment, abuse, and plain old taking advantage from within the Academy in the wake of the #MeToo movement. "I am not surprised at the number. I am surprised at the severity of many of the stories. I expected more quid pro quo or handsy passes made after drinking at an open...
President Trump, You’re No George Carlin
The Trump Administration has decided it’s finally time for it to whip out its best George Carlin impression. It’s announced its own list of seven words you can never say—at least not if you are working for the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. In 1972, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” was the last track on his stand-up album, Class Clown. In an interview with Terry Gross in 2004, Carlin explained that the routine was all...
Nothing Compares to You
For Russia watchers Christmas always comes early (or Hanukkah comes right on time!) when Putin gives his annual presser in mid-December to the journalists from Russia and around the world. This year was no exception, and Putin provided an almost 4-hour spectacle of economic indicator juggling, question evading and what looked like battling the flu. Even devoted supporters noticed that Putin was not on top of his game that day. He had to...
Challenges to the Contemporary World Order
A guest post by Thomas Pepinsky, is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and Stefanie Walter, Full Professor for International Relations and Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Many observers of contemporary global politics conclude that the present moment represents one of the most unsettled times in global politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shock events such as the...
ICAN’s Road to the Nobel Peace Prize
This is a guest post from Rebecca Gibbons, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College. On Sunday, December 10, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) will accept the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for calling attention to the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” of nuclear use and for promoting the recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This movement grew out of great frustration with a lack of...