The Duck of Minerva

Amanda Murdie

Amanda Murdie is Professor & Dean Rusk Scholar of International Relations in the Department of International Affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs (Stanford, 2014). Her main research interests include non-state actors, and human rights and human security. When not blogging, Amanda enjoys hanging out with her two pre-teen daughters (as long as she can keep them away from their cell phones) and her fabulous significant other.

Recent Posts

APSA Aerobics

by Amanda Murdie | 9 August, 2013 |

It’s almost APSA time and it seems all my friends are busy planning really wonderful sporting engagements for times they aren’t in panels.  This always puts me in a bind – I thought we became academics because we were bad at sports!  I can’t throw a Frisbee and soccer requires too much coordination.  So, I’ve compiled a list of the fun and somewhat aerobic things I plan to do at APSA, none of which require much coordination but all of which provide some thrill if carried out correctly: Push all the buttons in the Palmer House Hilton elevator.  Bonus points for doing this 5 minutes before a...

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What Helps End Minority Discrimination? Recent Cool Research

by Amanda Murdie | 7 August, 2013 |

Yesterday, four Neo-Nazis were finally sentenced for their roles in a series of brutal killings of Roma families in Hungary in 2008 and 2009.  Although the convictions have been applauded as a human rights victory, advocates are still demanding that Hungary steps up to the plate and protects the rights of Roma, a historically at-risk minority.  The killings were not isolated events against Roma in Hungary; other discriminatory actions have been occurring, without punitive consequences, for quite some time. Why are Roma still discriminated against in Hungary?  Hungary is an EU state.  The...

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Summer Teaching – Why Teach and What Makes It Different

by Amanda Murdie | 18 July, 2013 |

Recently, I finished teaching a month long summer course on International Relations to mainly first and second year undergrads at the University of Missouri.  Although I’ve taught summer courses before, this was actually one of my first experiences with having to –for the love of all things holy! – do what my public school teaching spouse does and ACTIVELY TEACH IN A CLASSROOM WITH THE SAME STUDENTS EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. This summer class got me thinking – for most people, how different is the summer teaching experience from the the typical semester teaching experience?  Like any good...

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Dear LaTeX: It’s not you, it’s me

by Amanda Murdie | 11 July, 2013 |

Dear LaTeX, You look so pretty.  In grad school, all the cool kids were using you.  You know, the kids that had backgrounds in differential calculus and ran R even when they didn’t have to? Those kids.  I wanted to be like them and have groundbreaking papers.  So, instead of working on my arguments and methods, I downloaded you and set out to write my dissertation with your wonderful program.  I mean, if the paper looks like it was written by someone who has their stuff together, it must be a well-done paper, right? Now, 4 years later, I realize the error of my ways.  You didn’t make my...

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Civil-Military Relations– Why A Little Conflict is OK

by Amanda Murdie | 25 June, 2013 |

Robert’s review of The American Culture of War yesterday was both extremely funny and informative.  It also mentioned a problem I’ve seen in a lot of the civil-military relations literature:  too much over-identification with a political leaning or ideology.  This area of scholarship reminds me sometimes of Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” – if I’m walking around the annual conference of the Inter-University Seminar at Armed Forces and Society without a uniform on, I’m immediately put in a category by some scholars.  That’s unfortunate – understanding the determinants of civil-military...

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The Baby Penalty

by Amanda Murdie | 17 June, 2013 |

I keep seeing this article pop around websites this morning: "Rule No. 1 for Female Academics: Don’t Have a Baby." I'm happy to see all the family friendly policies mentioned concerning assistant professors.  But, as the article points out, the "baby penalty" is also a concern for graduate students who are parents. My question: do you know of any family friendly policies for grad students?

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Having your Cake and Eating it Too: US Defense Cuts without Capability Cuts

by Amanda Murdie | 7 June, 2013 |

The Center for a New American Security released a report yesterday entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Defense Spending.”[1]  In it, they lay out some very basic (but very fundamental) ways that the DoD can cut costs but “preserve a strong and highly capable U.S. military.”  Many of the suggested cuts seem like something you would see Dunder Mifflin being advised to do: reduce redundancy in IT management, cut pay allowances, increase pharmaceutical cost sharing, etc. And, perhaps that’s the beauty of the plan: reduce normal day-to-day business expenses in such a way that it allows the DoD to...

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The Science of Teacher Evaluation Manipulation

by Amanda Murdie | 28 May, 2013 |

Hopefully, another semester has come to a close for you and you’re catching up on some much needed research/sleep.   After I’ve doled out grades for my students, I usually get a nice big stack of evaluations of my teaching abilities, filled out by those very same students who squeaked by with a “C-“in my class. At my previous university, it was the ONLY way my teaching was evaluated; for better or worse, no senior faculty or peers ever evaluated my teaching content, style, or skills in the classroom.  A whopping 40% of my annual evaluation came from what my students recorded on bubble-sheets...

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Women’s Income, Household Chores, Divorce, and the Need for a Norm Cascade

by Amanda Murdie | 15 May, 2013 |

In between making organic cupcakes for my daughters’ school, completing a grant application, tending my organic vegetables, and finishing an R&R for a journal, I came across this little gem of a working paper (thanks to Freakonomics Blog).[1] This new research shows the following: "Couples where the wife earns more than the husband are less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. Finally, based on time use surveys, the gender gap in non-market work is larger if the wife earns more than the husband" (abstract). So, in a nutshell, women who earn more than their...

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