Maybe the problem isn’t that scholars don’t know how to speak to U.S. foreign-policy makers, but rather that U.S foreign-policy makers don’t know how to engage with scholarship?
Bridging the Gap to Nowhere?
read more
public engagement
Middle East Studies: More Intellectual Diversity, or Better Public Outreach?
Middle East scholars recently released the results of the new Middle East Scholar Barometer. What does it tell us about Middle East Studies itself? Does it suggest the field is rich and progressing, or in need of an intellectual shakeup?
The “Dual-Use” Dilemma in Policy Engagement
Photo courtesy of the European Union. Used under Creative Commons License. This is a guest post by William Akoto, a postdoctoral researcher jointly appointed at the Sié Chéou-Kang Center...
Mission Impossible? Creating a Dialogue between Research, Policy and Practice Communities
A guest post by Julia Palik, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Govinda Clayton, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich; Simon J. A. Mason, Head of Mediation Support Team, Center for Security Studies,...
More public engagement Posts
Public scholarship and the challenge of academics’ public engagement in a new global order
I'll confess that post-November 8th, 2016, I spent a large amount of time in despair and unable to write anything coherent on the topics I am most interested in contributing here at the Duck of Minerva. It was hard for me to imagine what the global order would look like with someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named at the helm of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and not despair. But throughout the next few weeks after the US election, I have seen numerous colleagues in the IR and (more broadly) political science fields engage with society at large, trying to educate the masses on...
On advocacy, activism and political science
What is the role of political science and political scientists during contentious social and political moments? This question seems foremost in the minds of many political scientists (read Jeffrey Issac and Jennifer Victor). Political scientists are uniquely positioned to understand the institutions of government, processes of democratic consolidation and decline, and the power and influence of civil society, social movements and advocacy. Political scientists study populism, civil rights movements, xenophobia, nationalism, autocracy and democracy; we have invaluable insights to add to the...