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

DoD’S ‘Bloodless’ Ray-Guns

by Charli Carpenter | 17 October, 2011 |

The Economist reports on advances in non-lethal weaponry, emphasizing the latest line of research into electro-magnetic weapons: BULLETS and bombs are so 20th-century. The wars of the 21st will be dominated by ray guns. That, at least, is the vision of a band of military technologists who are building weapons that work by zapping the enemy’s electronics, rather than blowing him to bits. The result could be conflict that is less bloody, yet more effective, than what is now seen as conventional battle... The logical conclusion of all this is a so-called “human-safe” missile, which carries an...

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Friday Nerd Blogging

by Charli Carpenter | 14 October, 2011 |

And this week, in problematic-representations-of-indigenous-populations-on-children's-television, Lucasfilm brings you Nomad Droids: Well I guess some foreign policy subtext in TV for eight-year-olds is a step up from 99.7% of what's on American prime-time. Thanks to Clone Wars, my kid is quickly becoming fluent in such concepts as strategic depth, diversionary warfare and humanitarian mission creep. Last week he learned, for example, that real soldiers treat disaster relief as an annoying distraction from their actual job; that, though not bothering to understand what the locals need might...

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Crunching Corpse Counts: A Rejoinder by Michael Spagat Et Al.

by Charli Carpenter | 12 October, 2011 |

One of the few items recently that has caused me to emerge from my nothing-but-Friday-nerd-blogging temporary hiatus was this article on civilian war deaths by Michael Spagat and his collaborators. I wrote a post with some praise and some questions, and recently received a thoughtful response by email from Michael and his crew in which they further detail the coding methods used in the project. Since the original thread generated some interest, I've decided to post their response here.Civilian Targeting Index Clarificationby Madelyn Hicks, Uih Ran Lee, Ralph Sundberg and Michael SpagatSince...

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Friday Nerd Blogging

by Charli Carpenter | 7 October, 2011 |

My daughter loves the Game of Thrones story as told to her orally by my brother on a boat in Bali this summer. Yet she remains curiously unwilling to read the books or watch the HBO version with me. Apparently she might find it too hard on her stomach - puzzling, given her affinity for the eminently stomachable Hunger Games trilogy... perhaps to capture the teen sci-fi market George R. R. Martin should consider a final installment:

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Friday Nerd Blogging

by Charli Carpenter | 30 September, 2011 |

How the author coded the characters either for "good" or "lawful" certainly beggars the imagination. That said, as an out and proud political scientist I cannot help but appreciate a handy 3x3 grid wherever I can get one... H/T selfishmeme

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Friday Nerd Blogging

by Charli Carpenter | 17 September, 2011 |

Now that Blood and Chrome appears to be at risk of demotion from upcoming TV show to series of webisodes (!) BSG fans among the readership can at least geek out on this documentary. (Because most of us have so little better to do with the start of the term and all.)

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New Statistics on Civilian Targeting

by Charli Carpenter | 15 September, 2011 |

In a new paper, Michael Spagat and a number of collaborators explore the determinants of intentional civilian killing in war. Using sophisticated regression analysis they claim to have found "four significant behavioral patterns":"First, the majority (61%) of all formally organized actors in armed conflict during 2002-2007 refrained from killing civilians in deliberate, direct targeting.Second, actors were more likely to have carried out some degree of civilian targeted, as opposed to none, if they participated in armed conflict for three or more years rather than for one year.Third, among...

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Giving Peace a Chance

by Charli Carpenter | 14 September, 2011 |

Joshua Goldstein's book on peacekeeping is now out, and in this promotional video he shows us what the future of conference presentations could look like. ;)

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