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Thursday Morning Linkage

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by Josh Busby

25 July 2013, 1046 EDT

Here is your mid-morning linkage for this Thursday. Three strands this week: one on higher education and social science, another on conservation, and a third on global health. Oh, and CFR’s International Affairs Fellowship is taking applications.

Higher Education and Social Science

You all saw the story by the Harvard prof (now tenured I might add!) who mused on treating her tenure-track position as a 7-year postdoc (and Steve’s commentary). You probably also saw the broadside about shaking up the social sciences (and Dan’s post). Here are some other social science-y and higher ed. stories you might have missed:

  • History association calls for 6 year embargo on digital dissertations in mistaken fear digital diss will undermine first time book publication (please don’t read us!)
  • San Jose State struggles with low pass rates for its on-line courses, admittedly remedial students taking math
  • Are MOOCs (those online courses thingys) a passing fad (Dan Drezner wonders)?
  • Careful with those snarky, mean manuscript reviews (that means you Dan!)

Conservation

    • Here is an interview with Save the Rhino on South Africa’s proposed sale of rhino horn (I’d like to see a more vigorous and thoughtful response)
    • IFAW tweet suggests middle class Chinese attitudes on ivory need major work
  • Former US defence attache arrested in Kenya with ivory in his luggage (a–hole)
  • Divers nearly swallowed by humpback whale just trying to get his krill on

Health

  • New WHO guidelines for HIV/AIDS suggest that ARV treatment should start early and The New York Times notes that means more money to pay for it
  • Worrying polio resurgence in Somalia
  • Tom Bollyky flags the new fight over patents and drugs to fight NCDs (non-communicable diseases) like cancer
  • Female genital mutilation declining but still around, important story from Ethiopia (read story of Molly Melching’s efforts in Senegal)
  • Signs that mosquitoes are adapting to insecticide treated bednets, altering times of the day when they buzz

 

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

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