This is guest post from Philipp Schulz, a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. His work focuses on the gender dynamics of political violence, armed conflict and...
On Thursday, I became part of a growing group of academics that has had a letter like this written about them: As a parent, I’ve been doing some advocacy about my children’s school this year. The...
Recently, articles have emerged in both the United States and the United Kingdom concerned over the current politico-intellectual trend toward diminishing the importance and funding of the...
Greetings, fellow Duck readers. I realize I've been MIA this semester - DGS duties and ISA-Midwest stuff took too much of my non-research time. Another factor in my absence, however: a Monday...
That's what Forbes claims in an article that's generating much mirth in academic social-media circles. University professors have a lot less stress than most of us. Unless they teach summer school, they are off between May and September and they enjoy long breaks during the school year, including a month over Christmas and New Year’s and another chunk of time in the spring. Even when school is in session they don’t spend too many hours in the classroom. For tenure-track professors, there is some pressure to publish books and articles, but deadlines are few. Working conditions tend to be cozy...
This post would be much more interesting if it concerned the nexus of its three subjects. Sadly, it does not. I'm working on a forum piece with Vincent Pouliot on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) -- one written from the explicit perspective of outsiders. We've been puzzled by the apparent lack of theorization of "the body" in Latour. For example, if social relations must be 'fixed' by physical objects, why isn't the human body one such object? If any of our readers are able to weigh in, I'd appreciate it. I've been considering discontinuing the m4a versions of the Duck of Minerva podcast. They...
Sure we know we don't stick to New Year resolutions (apparently only 8% of resolutions are fulfilled) but they're fun to make, right? In addition to the top 5 New Year's resolutions that most people don't keep (losing weight, quitting smoking, going on a diet, stopping a bad habit, and getting more exercise) some of us make professional resolutions. So what do you think are the top 5 Academic New Year's resolutions you're likely to break? Here are my guesses/my unrealistic resolutions- feel free to weigh in with yours: 1. Write Every Day This is like the resolution that never quits. I don't...
Brad Delong calls this "hoisted from the archives," which is clearly a better term for what I'm doing. But, as that's taken and I'm not as smart as the great economics professor, I guess I'll just have to stick with this alternative. Peer reviewing: a call to arms (updated) From: 22 April 2009 I just turned down a request that I review for a journal because, in part, they failed to send me an anonymized copy of the decision letter the last time I reviewed for them. And this despite the journal using an electronic review system that automates the process. I can think of a number of reasons...
I read. Really, I do. In fact, I read alot. But most of the reading I do, I've figured out, is for one of two particular purposes. First, I read to review. The International Feminist Journal of Politics gets about 100 manuscripts a year, and I read about 30 books between the Oxford Series on Gender and IR and the New York University Press series on Gender and Political Violence. I do about 50 reviews per year for other journals and book publishers. I read stuff that my Ph.D. students are working on to make sure they are appropriately situated in the literature. Reading for reviews is largely...
I have read with great interest over the last few days posts by Jeffrey Stacey and now Sean Kay on the gap between scholarship and policy. I agree with much of what they said - seriously - and I want to raise a more positive spin on some of these issues. I the gap between policy and scholarship in Washington DC as *mildly* improving when it comes to political science, at least from the political science side of the question. This is not to say things are perfect. Far from it. But rather than thinking about political science in general, and international relations in particular, as a "cult of...
This is a guest post by Sean Kay. Jeff Stacey’s introductory blog post at the Duck of Minerva gives important perspective showing that scholarly training helped him in government to frame issues and develop policy. Stacey suggests academic perspectives should inform policy and, indirectly, corrects an argument in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Robert Gallucci. Gallucci, who has a distinguished career in government and academe, asked why scholars are not informing policy. Gallucci faults the scholarly community for an unfortunate turn towards theory and inaccessible discourse which...
Regarding my previous post and the very useful comments, first the matter of what do we do once we realize that a policy problem in search of a policy solution is the equivalent of a social scientific puzzle in search of an explanation, for both the solution and the explanation are outcomes. In other words, Step One is to identify the policy problem in question. Step Two is to search the academic literature for a published study (in book or article form) whose puzzle is essentially identical to the policy problem. For example, the problem of how to end a civil war in Country X is equivalent...