Forget protest movements and populist politics, to say nothing of academic blogging and scholarship -- if you want to change the world in your lifetime, this is the guy you ought to emulate. RIP Steve Jobs, one of the greatest practical visionaries of our time. PS note that Jobs' inspiration for the typography on the Mac was a college course ... a perfect testimony to the indirect but important influence that we academics can have on the world. Our students, not our research, are our near-term legacy -- even, perhaps, our "failed" students who end up doing insanely great things with our...

 Earlier today, I tweeted and blogged and even (dare I say it) facebooked to get some help.  The challenge: to come up with a good analogy to capture the incredibly strange idea that cutting foreign aid might be a way to address the US fiscal crisis.My starting point: Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like an alcoholic cutting back on apertifs.The responses thus far:  Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like an alcoholic cutting back on chocolate liquor candies. Nominated by The Duck's own Dan Nexon. A big improvement on mine.Cutting foreign aid to address...

We're welcoming a couple of new guest bloggers to Duck. Jay Ulfelder, who blogs at Dart Throwing Chimps, is a political scientist who does excellent work forecasting regime survival and change, democratization, and violent conflict. And Erica Chenoweth from Wesleyan University will be posting as Rational Insurgent -- also the name of her blog. She's done some amazing work on terrorism and most recently on civil resistance and non-violent conflict. A very warm welcome to both!

 In an August 30 piece for BBC News, Shashank Joshi, a graduate student at Harvard University and associate fellow at a major U.K. think tank, argued that strong statements from American officials about Syrian president Assad's loss of legitimacy would help advance the Syrian revolution by committing the U.S. to stronger courses of action. Joshi writes (emphasis added):The Syrian revolution of 2011 could also have been one more of those many abortive uprisings whose blood flecks the history of the modern Middle East, yet could not change its course. Things are no longer so clear. The outside...

Yesterday the FBI arrested a Massachusetts man, who has been subsequently charged with a number of crimes related to terrorism. [1] This is the latest in a string of plots that the U.S. has successfully thwarted, yet it raises alarms for many Americans who have felt immune from Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism on U.S. soil. Erik Dahl, of the Naval Postgraduate School, has identified dozens of credible plots (as many as 45 by jihadist-inspired groups or individuals, according to John Avlon) since 9/11, all of which have been either botched by offenders or thwarted by the authorities.Americans...

The musician K'naan's haunting elegy for his country Somalia, wracked by famine:So, 20 summers after I left as a child, I found myself on my way back to Somalia with some concerned friends and colleagues. I hoped that my presence would let me shine a light into this darkness. Maybe spare even one life, a life equal to mine, from indifferently wasting away. But I am no statesman, nor a soldier. Just a man made fortunate by the power of the spotlight. And to save someone’s life I am willing to spend some of that capricious currency called celebrity.My pale by comparison five-part series on...

The world has been watching this week as the Palestinian Government prepares to make a bid to the Security Council for recognition as an independent state. Many thought Obama had backed himself into a corner with a statement last year declaring his support for Palestinian statehood. But never fear, the President's propensity to dilute astute political goals to the point of meaninglessness appears to be limitless. In fact, if Obama was a superhero it is likely that his power would be to retract from lofty political objectives and political commitments at the speed of light. He entices victims...

Debate over NATO's military intervention in the Libyan civil war has reinvigorated discussion among observers of international relations on the merits (or demerits) of the United Nations's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. You can find links to important entries in the current debate at the end of this post, but I'm going to react here to one part of it. In a rejoinder to her critics, including IR student and Slouching Towards Columbia blogger Dan Trombly, Princeton University's Anne-Marie Slaughter casts R2P as an instrument for positive change in the international system, a wrench...