The Duck of Minerva

Charli Carpenter

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

Recent Posts

Friday Nerd Linkage

by Charli Carpenter | 5 July, 2013 |

Daniel Bier counters fear-mongering about the world's first genetically engineered babies, another fascinating case study of global normative ferment. But in truly weird science, humans can now transplant whole heads (or rather, bodies). Too bad this important advance comes too late for Ned Stark. -> William Beaty writes about the physics of traffic jams, proposing a simple solution ordinary citizens can use to  escape to de-clutter highways. Cyber-war, nano-weapons, and killer robots, oh my! International Review of the Red Cross has finally published a long-awaited special issue on...

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From Kingdonian to Weberian Activism: A Shifting Stance

by Charli Carpenter | 3 July, 2013 |

One of the great things about being done with my book project is that I can begin blogging and writing a little more openly regarding the issues I've been tracking empirically over the past seven years, in the same way I have often weighed in publicly on political subjects I'm not studying directly. The latter type of activity is referred to by Patrick Jackson and Stuart Kaufman as "Weberian activism": informing policy debates by educating stakeholders and the public about the relevant empirical relationships underlying pressing policy decisions and global processes. In my view, this is the...

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A Network Explanation for the Rise of Global Social Issues

by Charli Carpenter | 1 July, 2013 |

I am delighted to report that as of last Friday at 7:02pm I have completed final revisions on my latest book manuscript. This culminates a project on issue neglect that started with my observations about children born of war, emerged as a theory of "agenda-vetting," and involved a detailed NSF-funded study of the rise and fall of issues in the human security network. It also includes detailed case studies on several norm-building campaigns I've been following since 2007: the campaign to make amends to civilians harmed in legitimate battle operations, the campaign to ban infant male...

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Friday Nerd Linkage

by Charli Carpenter | 28 June, 2013 |

What can I say? It was a good week in the US for gender minorities. (On the other hand, this new list of "most influential people in armed violence reduction" includes only 25 women.) In other lighthearted nerd fare, this inspired the scientist in me who must complete the method(ologie)s appendix for my new book on human security issues by 5pm or (spontaneously com)bust. About that: here is a neglected human security threat I did not think to focus on in my book: mega-solar flares. Earth beware. Speaking of things cosmic, data streaming back to Earth from Voyager I is changing everything...

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The “Fear” Factor in “Killer Robot” Campaigning

by Charli Carpenter | 21 June, 2013 |

One of the more specious criticisms of the "stopkillerrobots" campaign is that it is using sensationalist language and imagery to whip up a climate of fear around autonomous weapons. So the argument goes, by referring to autonomous weapons as "killer robots" and treating them as a threat to "human" security, campaigners manipulate an unwitting public with robo-apocalyptic metaphors ill-suited to a rational debate about the pace and ethical limitations of emerging technologies. For example, in the run-up to the campaign launch last spring  Gregory McNeal at Forbes opined: HRW’s approach to...

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War Law, the “Public Conscience” and Autonomous Weapons

by Charli Carpenter | 20 June, 2013 |

In the Guardian this morning, Christof Heyns very neatly articulates  some of the legal arguments with allowing machines the ability to target human beings autonomously - whether they can distinguish civilians and combatants, make qualitative judgments, be held responsible for war crimes. But after going through this back and forth, Heyns then appears to reframe the debate entirely away from the law and into the realm of morality: The overriding question of principle, however, is whether machines should be permitted to decide whether human beings live or die. But this "question of principle"...

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How Do Americans Feel About Fully Autonomous Weapons?

by Charli Carpenter | 19 June, 2013 |

According to a new survey I've just completed, not great. As part of my ongoing research into human security norms, I embedded questions on YouGov's Omnibus survey asking how people feel about the potential for outsourcing lethal targeting decisions to machines. 1000 Americans were surveyed, matched on gender, age, race, income, region, education, party identification, voter registration, ideology, political interest and military status. Across the board, 55% of Americans opposed autonomous weapons (nearly 40% were "strongly opposed,") and a majority (53%) expressed support for the new ban...

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Globalizing Human Rights

by Charli Carpenter | 18 June, 2013 |

My colleague and friend James Ron has a new article up at Open Democracy (with Shannon Golden and David Crow) on asymmetric access of global populations to human rights machinery. The article is one in a new Open Democracy series "Open Global Rights," which aims to " relocate the [human rights] conversation away from the west and to the Global South." Ron, Golden and Crow's breakdown of new survey data from Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, and India suggests what this "conversation" looks like: Some say human rights are an ideology imposed on the rest by the powerful west. Consequently, critics...

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Post-Hiatus Killer Robot Blogging and Other Related Questions

by Charli Carpenter | 12 June, 2013 |

Many of you know that I've been traveling (and blogging) much less this past year while completing my book manuscript on neglected advocacy campaigns (and steering a daughter through a tough junior year). However one trip I managed to make recently was the April 22 NGO Conference for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which preceded the public launch of the campaign at Parliament. Humanitarian disarmament groups see this as the "next landmine campaign," and with Nobel Peace winner Jody Williams leading the charge along with disarmament elites at the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and a...

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A Duck at Arms: Introducing Our First Military Correspondent

by Charli Carpenter | 6 February, 2013 |

Most of you have probably noticed I've been on something like an indefinite hiatus for the past few months. This is not permanent, but it will likely continue for at least large parts of this semester as I help my daughter through some health issues. In the meantime, it is customary when a permanent contributor is on an extended hiatus to recruit a replacement, and since Amanda and Betcy are more than covering the human rights/NGO/humanitarian law angle, I thought what better than to bring someone on who can focus on military issues. And who better to do that than a member of our active duty...

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