Recent events make it clear: whether loved or loathed, government policies are central to our lives. That’s why public policy schools are devoted to understanding the causes, design, implementation, and effects of government policies. And it’s why some...
As I was traveling back from APSA on Sunday, I completed all of the journal reviews that I had on my desk, ran some regressions for new projects, and then completed all the revisions my coauthors...
Greetings, PhD Class of 2019. Welcome.  We are excited for your arrival on campus later this summer. As you enjoy your summer, I thought I’d take this opportunity to write you with some advice...
As a junior faculty member, I am not in a position to turn down advice. Fortunately, I receive good advice from mentors, colleagues, and friends. I am very thankful. Lately, I have also been...
I skipped APSA this year in favor of BISA/ISA. In fact, I haven't renewed my membership this year.Still, I wonder if we can't make lemons out of lemonade.How about a virtual APSA? If you are an IR/CP scholar who has bailed on APSA let us know (in comments) and consider posting an abstract of your presentation.Heck, if there's enough interest maybe people can make power points available for discussion.UPDATE: it appears that virtual is the only option (I retain the lovely yellow from the apsanet.org site).2012 APSA Annual Meeting Canceled President G. Bingham Powell announces the cancellation...
Because not everyone reads comment threads, in part because of the way that people engage with The Duck via RSS readers, and because think the questions involved are really important ones, I'm going to post my reaction to PM's "Yes, I do envy physicists"as a separate post of its own:Man, I was right with you until your advance response to commenters. Making "data and its analysis central to the undergraduate experience" -- a.k.a. emphasizing undergraduate research, such that one of the primary learning outcomes of a BA in International Relations or Government or Political Science or whatever...
If you order from Cafe Press on Amazon, tshirts can get delivered by Tuesday - in time to tell APSA that, even if you're going to the conference, you haven't forgotten that APSA is wrong on this issue. Sorry for the late announcement - my to-do list got a little backed up ...
From Jeffrey C. Isaac, the editor of Perspectives on Politics:I am very happy to report that Melissa Harris-Perry just held up a copy of the new Perspectives on Politics on her MSNBC show and quoted me (!!) about "Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Politics of Reconstruction," the theme of our new 10th anniversary issue!! The "play" she gave our journal on the air was greatly appreciated....I believe that the current issue of Perspectives is the first issue in the history of APSA journals to be a special issue (at 300 pages!), timed to come out in advance of the annual meetings, to address a...
PTJ and Dan discuss academic administration and the foreign-policy rhetoric of the 2012 campaign.
I have spent the past several days at orientation meetings at my new place of employment. I am coming in with tenure (just as I did the last time), so I am not concerned about tenure directly. I do care about tenure procedures because the granting of lifetime employment (essentially) is a pretty serious enterprise and how academic units deal with it shapes the culture of the place. So, in the course of events, I asked questions about it, and I also watched the folks around me get heaps of advice from the various panelists. As a result, tenure is on my mind. Not the first time of course,...
There's a fascinating post making the rounds. In it, Stephen Curry discusses the history and abuse of journal impact-factor data. Curry links alternatives to the rise of open-access publications and new-media discussion of research findings. Twenty years on from Seglen’s analysis a new paper by Jerome Vanclay from Southern Cross University in Australia has reiterated the statistical ineptitude of using arithmetic means to rank journals and highlighted other problems with the impact factor calculation. Vanclay points out that it fails to take proper account of data entry errors in the titles...
2012 interview with Ted Hopf.