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by Jon Western

14 June 2013, 0921 EDT

 

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Are we headed to war in Syria?  

Meanwhile:

This week in contested academic politics…

  • AAUP asks who controls intellectual property rights in MOOCs?
  • Everyone really does hate accrediting agencies.
  • Does being an $%#@hole count against you in a tenure decision?  Do we really have to ask this?

Jon Western has spent the last fifteen years teaching IR in liberal arts colleges at Mount Holyoke College and the Five Colleges in western Massachusetts. He has an eclectic range of intellectual interests but often writes on international security, U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, and human rights. He occasionally shares his thoughts about professional life in liberal arts colleges. In his spare time he coaches middle school soccer, mentors the local high school robotics team, skis, and sails.

2 Comments

  1. Dan Nexon
    Dan Nexon on 14 June 2013 at 11.06 EDT

    Yeah. I’ve noted how psyched the White House must be that they have (1) a red line, (2) that’s been crossed, and (3) isn’t nakedly geo-strategic. Because, you know, the timing of this couldn’t have anything to do with changing assessments of the battlefield balance after Hezbollah’s intervention.

    • Jon Western
      Jon Western on 14 June 2013 at 11.41 EDT

      My 15-year-old son’s first question this morning when he heard the linked NPR story was “That doesn’t make sense. We’ve known about chemical weapons for months, why now?” After about a two-second paus he concluded: “ah, Hezbollah.”