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...
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...
This week, courtesy of my colleague Adam Stulberg and the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy, our department hosted Matthew Kroenig. When I first learned of Kroenig’s visit,...
The boon and bane of our academic enterprise is that we get feedback all the time on our work. Our work is better for it--that the hack-iest stuff I read is always stuff that is not submitted to...
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. Â 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...
Kindred Winecoff disagrees that this was a modest victory: I must completely disagree with his ("modest") level of satisfaction. This represents no victory at all because this new statement from URI officials, like the first one, completely misses the point. This is not about First Amendment rights. Nobody was saying that Loomis should be thrown into the deepest darkest dungeon never to be heard from again. They were saying that he should be fired or otherwise professionally damaged for an emotional -- and politically motivated -- response to a mass killing. The relevant standard here is...
The URI administration has issued a new statement: What to make of this? On the one hand, I don't think anybody will buy the claim that (1) Erik is at fault for "not making clear that he was speaking solely as an individual" and (2) that this failure provided the "rationale for our original statement." The URI administration doesn't go far enough in terms of redressing the most offensive part of the earlier, rushed response: its implicit characterization of Erik's comments as "acts or threats of violence." On the other hand... I'll just outsource the "other hand" to Corey Robin: The...
In my first post after signing on with "Team Duck" I thought, before jumping into a series of weighty topics--rise of the east, end of the west, cratering of the middle east--it might be worth reflecting a little on my sojourn as a policymaker after beginning my career as a Political Scientist. As an IR scholar I started out specializing in the politics of international economics before gradually shifting over to the security studies side of this Poli Sci subfield. After an initial brush with death by acronymia when I joined the State Department, I was surprised at how well my training as a...
As I sorta implied below, you don't need to agree with Erik's political views or his manner of expressing them to recognize that the President of the University of Rhode Island's statement is all kinds of appalling. The good folks at Crooked Timber have put together a petition to that effect. Go sign, if you'd be so kind. Meanwhile, Glen Reynolds explains the underlying dynamic of this kind of attack. Except he's one of the enablers of the cyber-assault on Loomis. As Paul Campos notes, irony is dead.
I wasn't going to post anything about the cyber-intimidation campaign being directed at Erik Loomis, as that seemed like a job for Big Important Liberal Blogs and not for the Duck of Minerva. But now the issue has strayed directly into our territory. In brief, Erik Loomis is a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and a long-time blogger. His highest-profile gig is at Lawyers, Guns & Money. In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown massacre, Erik tweeted that he "wanted to see Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick." The usual suspects in the conservative blogsphere soon...
Earlier today, Brian Rathbun criticized "rationalists" for making assumptions.*  I have some thoughts on the matter, and I expressed many of them on Twitter.  And in the language of Twitter -- snark.  That was not the best response, and I regret the tone of my reaction, if not the substance thereof.  I'd like to try now for a more constructive dialogue. Let's start where we agree.  Brian writes It seems for rationalists that assumptions are statements that one makes to make the building of theoretical models easier. It does not matter if they are true, only if they are useful. Assumptions...
As one of the two great still-extant medieval institutions, the church confronts the digital age with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Hope, because congregations and ministers with online presence can build up new types of community and remain in contact through a variety of media; trepidation, because the church, like any incumbent industry, looks with fear at the fate of travel agents, small retailers, and print newspapers. Having seen each industry fall to the likes of Expedia, Amazon, and the Huffington Post, the leaders of churches throughout the United States and beyond worry that...