While the Russia probe is expanding to include naïve 36-year old Harvard graduates, pundits all over the world have been worried about elections in other countries. The massive WikiLeaks dump (pun intended) on Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in France did not work, so the next troublesome case seems to be Germany (the UK is fine, they are already leaving the EU). As Quattrociocchi et al. note, the so-called ‘echo-chambers’ on social media reinforce...
In the aftermath of Trump's visit to Brussels one dynamic has been overlooked. It starts with a basic reality of NATO: when there is a mission, countries are not obligated to hand over military units for the effort. Instead, what happens is this (see chapter two of Dave and Steve's book), as one officer told us that "force generation is begging:" The officers at the NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, along with the relevant regional...
The perhaps apocryphal story is that in the wake of the 2016 election, submissions to top journals in political science declined by 15% or more. While this sabbatical year has been productive in many respects, I have not made as much progress on a book project as I would have liked. I wonder why? Last week's events -- the dramatic firing of FBI Director James Comey and the series of justifications and admissions by the president and his team --...
Ebola is back, but that doesn’t mean that the world should panic. A little more than a year ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the West African Ebola outbreak, which killed more than 11,000 people in the largest outbreak of the disease ever, was officially over. On May 11th, WHO announced that the Democratic Republic of Congo had identified 9 suspected cases of Ebola over the past three weeks. Three people had already died,...
This is a guest post by Dillon Stone Tatum, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at Francis Marion University. If the liberal world order isn’t dead, commentators have killed it. The recent explosion in analysis focusing on what Donald Trump, or broader populist movements, mean for the future of world order have already written both the eulogy and the obituary for liberal internationalism. Robert Kagan makes...
This is a guest post from Matthew Hoffmann, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Should I stay or should I go now? If I go, there will be trouble And if I stay it will be double (The Clash) The Trump administration is nearing a decision about whether to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. A number of commentaries are urging Trump to stay in and my underlying predilection is to join this chorus. Cards on...
This is a guest post from Brendan Szendro, a PhD Student in Political Science, Binghamton University and follows a previous post on the topic of autism On April 19, William H. Moore, a Political Science professor with what he termed “borderline Autism,” committed suicide after writing a lengthy note on his blog. In it, he detailed his frustrations with his perennial outsider status, his inability to communicate his talents professionally,...
This is a guest post by Betcy Jose, Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Colorado-Denver and Lucy McGuffey, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Colorado-Denver. In season 3 of House of Cards, the US Ambassador to the UN introduces a “Uniting for Peace” resolution in the General Assembly to deploy peacekeepers to the Jordan Valley, bypassing a Russian Security Council veto on a similar...
The former Wall Street Journal writer Bret Stephens has a column today to kick off his new digs at the New York Times that meanders into climate change territory and has raised some hackles. In the piece, he talks about how public opinion on climate change is soft, which some folks have complained doesn't capture public opinion accurately. Both are true in my view and miss the point. As the Storify thread of tweets below talks about, Republican...
A dilute alcoholic solution of Brilliant Green (Viridis nitentis spirituosa) is a topical antiseptic, effective against gram-positive bacteria, also known under a Russian colloquial name zelyonka. If you grew up in the Soviet Union and ever had chicken pox, zelyonka turned you into a green-spotted leopard for at least a week: it’s hard to get it out of your skin. Brilliant green has, however, some serious safety issues: when ingested it can...
This is a guest post by Amelia Hoover Green, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University. Will Moore's death was a tragedy. To state the hopefully obvious: Will's ferocious productivity makes his death no more or less tragic. Public tributes to Will focus, rightly, on his forthrightness, his heart for justice, his mentorship, his kindness. But productivity—as a value, as a compulsion, or both—shows up...
This is a guest post by Lee Ann Fujii, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and currently a Member Scholar of the Institute for Advanced Study. This post is based on the keynote address she gave at ISA-NE in November 2016 in Baltimore, Maryland. These days most political science department are discussing the need for greater diversity in their ranks. These conversations tend to follow a well-worn path. They never start at Step 1—as...