Paul Musgrave concludes the “Lab Leaks” symposium by engaging with his interlocutors and reflecting on the challenges faced by political science in an era of public-facing scholarship.
Yesterday, I had the chance to participate in the Bridging the Gap workshop led by Bruce Jentleson. It is an effort every summer to help younger scholars figure out how to engage the policy world...
Yesterday, the Governing Council met for 17 days and nights .... or about six hours to discuss the various issues on the agenda. I will not get into the details of the meeting (I live-tweeted the...
Last winter, the ISA executive committee proposed new rules for editors of ISA journals that would restrict their blogging. This led to a pretty hostile reaction. At the ISA meeting, the proposal...
Online mediums can be perceived as attracting wacky ranters unrepresentative contributors and exchanges and, therefore, forums or chats are often treated as if they do not provide an effective picture/sample of political discourse. But since over 80% of Americans are online, 66% of American adults have engaged in civil or political activities with social media, and about half of those who visit discussion groups post/contribute, isn't this an interesting- and increasingly relevant- medium for a discourse analysis? Why cut out such a vast political resource? What is different about 'doing' a...
Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. As some of you may know, I'm up for tenure this year, and it's not going to work out. I don't want to get into the details of anything that ought not be discussed in public, but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts that some of you might find to be of interest. First, to the best of my understanding, my presence on social media played little to no role in this decision. So if there's still fear out there that blogging comes at a price, please don't point to my case as an example. I don't know exactly why this happened, and...
The ISA mess is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Nicholas Kristof has written a piece in his NYT column that "addresses" the controversy. The problem is that the column is out of date. Not just in focusing on the ISA proposal that has been beaten back by the forces of reason (that would be me and other bloggers?), but that other canards get lumped in. While some noted bloggers have been denied tenure, it is highly unlikely that their blogging did them in. Indeed, there is more pressure by lots of folks (presidents, provosts, deans, grant agencies) to do more outreach. And there is...
Steve has a nice roundup of many of the central concerns with ISA's misguided policy proposal to limit those involved in editing ISA journals from blogging. Â I'd like to focus on one additional element. For many of us located principally in the teaching side of the profession, we realize and appreciate the significance and utility of blogs for pedagogical purposes. Â Here in the Five Colleges, a key part of communicating with students is through various forms of social media. Â My department has a Twitter feed and a Facebook page that features a fantastic daily blog by my colleague Vinnie...
The International Studies Association Executive Committee has forwarded a proposal to the Governing Council that meets at the Association's annual meeting that addresses blogging. The proposal and my take on it are discussed at my blog. The essence of it is to prohibit those involved in the editing of journals from blogging. The text of it goes beyond that, assuming/asserting that blogging is inherently unprofessional. That is not a message that the ISA should be sending out now or ever, really. Will Moore takes a swing at the policy as well. I am sure others will do as well here and...
[Note:  This is a guest post from Mira Sucharov and Brent E. Sasley.  Mira Sucharov is Associate Professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She blogs at Haaretz.com and at Open Zion. Follow her on Twitter.  Brent Sasley is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He blogs at Mideast Matrix. Follow him on Twitter.] Changes to our technology and to our scholarly norms present new challenges to scholars who engage in the public sphere. More and more academics in Political Science, and especially...
Last month, Dani Rodrik wrote a piece for Project Syndicate that went all kinds of viral.  In it, he explains why he no longer views himself as a political economist.  The upshot: because if he believed the stuff he used to believe, he'd have to accept that there's not much room for improving the world through op-eds, and that's not something he's prepared to accept. Consider this passage: But there was a deep paradox in all of this. The more we claimed to be explaining, the less room was left for improving matters. If politicians’ behavior is determined by the vested interests to which they...
PM's latest post, "Nobody cares about foreign policy" (note to self: we need a style manual to resolve whether, for example, post titles should be capitalized), was prompted by a proseminar we both attended on Monday. At this proseminar, the always-interesting and invariably thoughtful Elizabeth Saunders presented part of her book project: a paper entitled "The Electoral Disconnection in US Foreign Policy." Among other things, Saunders argues that theories of "democratic international relations" -- particularly those surrounding audience costs -- need to incorporate a central insight from...