The Duck of Minerva

The Duck of Minerva Newsletter is Live

Metablogging

by Dan Nexon

3 May 2022, 2254 EDT

We’ve got a newsletter! Yeah, sure, the large front-page button labelled “newsletter” might’ve been a clue. But still, the Duck of Minerva is (kinda) on Substack.

We’re not alone.

The old academic and academic-adjacent blogosphere is, apparently, in the process of reconstituting itself over there. There’s Abu Aardvark, Brad DeLong, Tim Burke, and many others. It reminds me, albeit only slightly, of how my old usenet group reemerged as a Facebook page. But with paywalls.

It’s probably obvious that – at least until a few days ago – I’ve only read individual posts on the platform. These did strike me as essentially longer-form blogging with a Medium-style aesthetic. Now that I’ve gotten a look at Sustack’s page templates… yep, it’s no-hassle blogging.

Now that we’ve got a newsletter, what are we going to do with it?

Van Jackson pitched it to me as a way of aggregating content – an upgrade from the venerable, and declining, use of RSS feeds to follow websites like the Duck. It might also be the forcing mechanism that I need to get my blogging groove back. Otherwise, I’m still not sure.

Does it make sense to reproduce the newsletter here?

Should we be posting Duck content to Substack?

One thing I can say: we have no intention of paywalling our content. As one of the new buttons foreshadows, I’m not above begging for tips. Paywalls, though? Even if we didn’t rely on guest posters, it still wouldn’t fit the ethos.

What else is happening? We do have some cool new content on the way. But I’m always looking for more.

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

1 Comment

  1. Dan Tompkins
    Dan Tompkins on 4 May 2022 at 14.14 EDT

    Glad to get this. Duck has introduced me to new and worthwhile thinkers and thoughts, and I want to see it prosper. More fair than fowl!