Yesterday was an exciting day in American politics, featuring legislative time-traveling, a Supreme Court turning back the clock on voting rights, and of course the invalidation of DOMA and the death-by-default of California’s Prop 8.
But I assume you have Facebook and that you already knew all that.
Here’s some items you might have missed:
- Former PM Kevin Rudd ousted Australian PM Julia Gillard as Labor Party leader but not (yet?) as prime minister. Question for our antipodean readers: Why isn’t it the “Labour” Party? [The Diplomat]
- U.S. CEO held captive by PRC workers. I blame nobody in this confrontation–morally at least–but I do have to think that the PRC government (at some level) should be much more concerned about this.
- Qatar has a new emir, prime minister, and government. The new emir pledges a humble foreign policy and continuity, but It Remains To Be Seen.
And now some quick hits:
- Do America’s governors matter for its foreign relations? The article says yes, but I hope to God the answer is no. State governments may matter for the flow of some FDI, but otherwise there’s no reason to suspect this is even of tertiary importance. [The Diplomat]
- Dan Drezner talks about schools going global. There is a puzzle to be asked here–why do authoritarian states want liberal-arts schools?–and it’s part of a conversation about space and politics that I’d like to learn more about at next year’s ISA. But Drezner doesn’t address the other half of the explanation: that these services don’t just lose money for host governments, they lose gobs of money, and thus they’ll only last as long as someone’s picking up the bill. Singapore’s already cracked down on some schools; one only wonders how long before Qatar does too.
Why Labor not Labour? https://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/why-does-the-australian-labor-party-embrace-an-american-spellingfor-its-name/2005/12/08/1133829714837.html
Perhaps more authoritatively: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=P7JPEyeUVroC&pg=PT163&lpg=PT163&dq=alp+labor+labour+name+spelling&source=bl&ots=yD5Xt86OCt&sig=wUt83b3tBS7y_ZuDJhOs0XhcaPw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BrDLUYC2G4eLkwWqvoHoDQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAzgK
I think Drezner and Diehl exaggerate the degree to which “intellectual life is different” at satellite campuses than at home campuses. There are certainly some differences, such as the ban in Singapore against the organization of student-led political activity on campus, but in terms of academic contents it’s not obvious to me that there is a substantial difference between a course taught in Shanghai or Abu Dhabi and a course taught in New York or Princeton.
Now for the other issues, including the financing of campuses and the tacit endorsement of certain type of labor regimes (especially in Abu Dhabi, I definitely agree that those are issues in need of much deeper analysis and debate.
As the Internets say, this is relevant to my interests.
I will have more considered thoughts on this in six months or so.