Praeger has published a new two-volume compendium on arms control edited by Robert Williams Jr. and Paul R.Viotti. If you're writing anything on the subject of arms, weapons advocacy or national security governance Volume 1, at least, is a pretty helpful resource -...
I've been conspicuously silent on the matter of who would or should succeed Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank. This was because I was convinced that it was coming down to a Hobson's...
Over the last few weeks it has been hard not to get overwhelmed by all the headlines related to the Republican primaries and women. There has been theRush Limbaugh fiasco, with Rush outdoing his...
Rush Limbaugh, the teaparty, OWS, all the way to the seven sisters -- a deeply misguided Smith College alumna, an open feud between Barnard and Columbia... and so it goes... Bobcat Goldthwait's new...
For those of you who do not know, I live in Gainesville, Florida, a college town in Northeast Florida with lots of wonderful things - like a great bunch of colleagues, a great bunch of graduate students, weather to write home about, and a (frequently) rocking football team. It is (largely) a fairly politically progressive place, but there's still good country music - a great home to mix my Southern roots and lefty-academic tendencies. It is also, however, the place where the "Qu'ran burning" almost happened, and (thankfully) didn't. But that didn't stop it from causing deaths all the way...
The following, unless otherwise specified, result in the taking of one drink for every observation/sighting at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association. The Duck of Minerva is not responsible for any liver damage or unfortunate choice of panel questions that may result after participating in this game.Someone wearing their conference badge at 2am or more than a mile from the actual conference site.Bow-ties.Observing two people talking where one person is looking over their shoulder for someone more important. Someone carrying their own book around.Young scholar...
Ah, the viciously gate-keeping peer review, the contemporary equivalent of burning the heretics at the stake. Receiving such a review seems to be a rite of passage in virtually every academic field and discipline of which I am aware, and though the details change, the general theme of such a review is always something like: "Author didn't make the argument I would have made or have made, or even worse, Author directly challenged the argument I made or would have made; hence, since I am protected by a veil of anonymity, I will take my vengeance on Author by taking Author to task for being...
Here at the opening of the new academic year, I sometimes find myself called on to make speeches welcoming students to campus and that sort of thing. I can't resist the opportunity to actually inject a little practical-moral content into what can otherwise be fairly fluffy events, and this year I've been playing with a particular metaphor for college education that I am somewhat fond of. I've given versions of or excerpts from this talk a couple of times in the past week, but here below the fold is the fuller version.I intend to once again take up the mantle of the methodology411 over the...
Just in case you were in suspense, the ICJ has declared that Kosovo's declaration of independence to be legal. Unsurprisingly, the Kosovars are happy, the Serbs are not happy and countries with independence movements are probably a bit more nervous. As the Guardian reports:The ruling is expected to have profound ramifications on the wider international stage, bolstering demands for recognition by territories as diverse as Northern Cyprus, Somaliland, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.Still, it was unlikely that a negative ruling would have meant the end of such...
Today is International Justice Day – at least according to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. (What?! Aren’t you celebrating?!)It comes at an interesting time. The ICC ruled this past week that the charge of Genocide may be included as part of the allegations against Sudanese President Bashir. Secondly, the ICJ will be ruling next week on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.While both of these may suggest that international justice is strengthening throughout the system, I wonder if these events may actually demonstrate the opposite in some ways.First, there is hope that...
I’ve noticed that there has been little ‘quacking’ (ugh, I finally went there) on the blog on the subject of the World Cup. This might be due to the fact that I think pretty much all of us, regardless of location, are North American where ‘soccer’ is a fabulous summer sport if you are a female university student or a 9 year old. (Actually, that’s not fair – I went to a DC United game last fall and had a blast. It's a well-kept secret that US soccer fans actually know how to have a good time.)But do you know is paying attention to the World Cup? Radical Islamic militants.That’s right. Osama...
I don't have a lot to say intellectually about the BP oil spill... others can do that perhaps more coherently. But between Hurricane Ivan and the oil washing up, the town I grew up in ...well, is a very different place. There's a sense of decenteredness that comes with that, and I got to thinking ...maybe that's just a small little piece of what a lot of people in conflict zones and disaster areas feel every day. Maybe. So even in the decenteredness ... I'm pretty lucky.