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

De-ComposingConstructing the Zombie Menace

by Charli Carpenter | 21 June, 2010 |

Daniel Drezner has expounded on his seminal "Zombies and IR" blog postwith a full spread on the topic in the July/August Foreign Policy:The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses... poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response? How would all those theories hold up under the pressure of a zombie assault? When should humans decide that hiding and hoarding is the right idea?What follows...

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Social Media, Politics and the Academy

by Charli Carpenter | 11 June, 2010 |

With apologies for the terrible audio on my end. I’m traveling so this comes to you from a noisy space through a low quality mike.Henry Farrell and I ramble about Wikileaks, Facebook, academic blogging, and whether or not humans may reap positive externalities during the coming zombie plague if the Internet is indeed rewiring our braaaiiiins, making us less appetizing…

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What If Political Scientists Wrote the News?

by Charli Carpenter | 8 June, 2010 |

From Christpher Beam at Slate:A powerful thunderstorm forced President Obama to cancel his Memorial Day speech near Chicago on Monday—an arbitrary event that had no affect on the trajectory of American politics.Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals...

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Open Thinking-Outside-The-Box-on-How-To-Out-Crazy-North-Korea Thread

by Charli Carpenter | 28 May, 2010 |

Daniel Drezner asks whether there are any options for dealing with evidence of North Korea’s involvement on the sinking of the Cheonan besides diddling around in the UN Security Council with a resolution that China may well veto. He rightly suggests that this is essentially a game of chicken that the North always wins because it seems crazier and less predictable than most civilized states (true). He points out the conventional wisdom that war must be avoided at all costs because Pyongyang is poised to deal a devastating blow to Seoul (and Pyongyang, for its part, knows it would probably be...

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What ISA Can Learn from Small Niche Conferences

by Charli Carpenter | 22 May, 2010 |

What you see on the board in the picture is the visual description of my latest research article on weapons advocacy, which will be out later this year in International Organization. Also in the picture are yours truly and Duck co-blogger Drew Conway hob-nobbing. Those things we're waving around as we talk? Yuengling beers. This took place earlier this week at the Networks in Political Science conference at Duke University, and the nature of this poster session at this friendly, fun niche geek-fest has something to teach conference organizers in big associations like ISA and APSA.Here's the...

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What “New Rules of War?”

by Charli Carpenter | 20 May, 2010 |

I’ve been meaning to comment for awhile on the Mar/April print issue of Foreign Policy , and I finally got around to posting my observations at Current Intelligence. In brief, for an issue devoted to transformations in the way we fight, what struck me is how completely the authors and FP editors overlooked the ways in which the trends described relate to the law of war:Even John Arquilla’s lead article misleadingly titled “The New Rules of War” gives no thought whatsoever to the actual moral and legal rule-sets governing war: humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, and the UN charter...

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Shameless Self-Promotion

by Charli Carpenter | 19 May, 2010 |

My new book, Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond is finally out from Columbia University Press. Basically, it's all you never wanted to know about why children born of wartime rape have been overlooked by the human rights movement for the last two decades, and how this could be changed. Here's what's on the back cover: Sexual violence and exploitation occur in many conflict zones, and the children born of such acts face discrimination, stigma, and infanticide. Yet the massive transnational network of organizations working to protect...

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And Justice for All?

by Charli Carpenter | 12 May, 2010 |

Gary Haugen and Victor Boutrous have a useful article in the new print version of Foreign Affairs, pointing out that all the human rights standards in the land mean nothing if they're not translated into practical justice for every human being. Particularly, they point out how the ability to enjoy one's legal rights is related to wealth. Efforts by the modern human rights movement over the last 60 years have contributed to the criminalization of [various] abuses in nearly every country. The problem for the poor, however, is that those laws are rarely enforced. Without functioning public...

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