The Duck of Minerva

Josh Busby

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.

Recent Posts

Renewable or Sustainable? Green Energy Is More Complicated Than You Think

Renewable or Sustainable? Green Energy Is More Complicated Than You Think

by Josh Busby | 2 September, 2020 | ,

Jen Evans (Twitter: @Jen_L_Evans) is a PhD student at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and a Project Lead at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures. Her research focuses on resource rights, cooperation, and conflict. On 30 June, House Democrats released a climate plan aimed at eliminating the U.S. economy’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The plan mandates sweeping shifts towards clean and renewable energy, with U.S. automakers transitioning to solely electric vehicle production and electric utility providers operating as net-zero...

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We all suffer if the field is parochial

We all suffer if the field is parochial

by Josh Busby | 27 August, 2020 | , ,

David C. Kang is Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Korean Studies Institute. His latest book, coedited with Stephan Haggard, East Asia in the World: Twelve Events that Shaped the Modern International Order, will be published Cambridge University Press next month. This summer, the graduate students in our Ph.D. program here at USC, and the undergraduates as well, called for an end to the Eurocentric curriculum in our department. They noted that there are twice as many classes devoted to Europe as there are...

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U.S. Political Scientists Must Work To Support Free and Fair Democratic Elections

U.S. Political Scientists Must Work To Support Free and Fair Democratic Elections

by Josh Busby | 17 August, 2020 | , ,

This is a guest post by Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. You can follow him at his blog at Democracy in Dark Times. Democracy is a central and arguably the central theme of contemporary American political science research and teaching. This is certainly true in the “subfields” conventionally designated as “Comparative Politics,” “American Politics,” and “Political Theory.” And even where it is not the central theme, as in most “International Relations” inquiry, it is an important theme. By far the most broadly influential...

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Indonesia’s Half-hearted Response to COVID-19: The Role of Politics and Historical Legacies

Indonesia’s Half-hearted Response to COVID-19: The Role of Politics and Historical Legacies

by Josh Busby | 4 August, 2020 | , ,

This is a guest post from Alexander R Arifianto (Twitter: @DrAlexArifianto), a Research Fellow with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on contemporary domestic politics and political Islam in Indonesia. Nearly six months after the first case of coronavirus was first diagnosed in Indonesia, the country is in the midst of its largest public health crisis in history. As of August 3rd, about 113,000 Indonesians are confirmed to be infected and 5,300 have died from the illness. Indonesia is currently ranked the...

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Love, Loathing, and Loss: America’s COVID-19 Response and the View from Canada

Love, Loathing, and Loss: America’s COVID-19 Response and the View from Canada

by Josh Busby | 31 July, 2020 | , , ,

This is a guest post from Jennifer Mustapha and Eric Van Rythoven. Mustapha is an Assistant Professor at Huron University College in London, Ontario and studies the politics of the War on Terror, globalization and development, and Southeast Asian regional relations. Rythoven teaches International Relations and Foreign Policy at Carleton University, Canada.  His work has been published in Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Relations, and Journal of Global Security Studies, among others.  For many observers America’s catastrophic response to COVID-19 is a far-off spectacle...

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Hagia Sophia and the Multi-Level Politics of Heritage

Hagia Sophia and the Multi-Level Politics of Heritage

by Josh Busby | 15 July, 2020 |

This is a guest post from Elif Kalaycioglu, who is an assistant professor at the University of Alabama. Her research is on international relations, world order and global governance with a focus on UNESCO’s world heritage regime, global cultural politics and the impact of cultural diversity on the international order and its institutions.On Friday, June 10th 2020, the highest administrative court in Turkey annulled the 1934 cabinet decree that transformed Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum. UNESCO’s press release, lamented the decision concerning the world heritage site and urged Turkey...

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Forced Marriage: Three Facts to Help Explain This Global Conflict Dynamic

Forced Marriage: Three Facts to Help Explain This Global Conflict Dynamic

by Josh Busby | 14 July, 2020 | , ,

This is a guest post from Phoebe Donnelly (@PhoebsG86), a Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University and a Women and Public Policy Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. The UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) passed without much recognition on June 19. However, CRSV has not disappeared during the global pandemic and victims of different forms of CRSV face additional hurdles to accessing services and support. Certain survivors in particular, those in forced marriages with members of rebel groups, may face...

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The networks and hidden procedures that keep discrimination alive in academia

The networks and hidden procedures that keep discrimination alive in academia

by Josh Busby | 12 July, 2020 | ,

This is the third post in our series on Race&IR.This is a guest post from Carla Norrlöf and Cheng Xu. Carla Norrlöf is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. Her research is in international relations and international political economy with a focus on US hegemony, great power politics and liberal international order. Follow here at @CarlaNorrlof Cheng Xu is a PhD student at the University of Toronto. His research is in international relations and comparative politics with a focus on insurgencies and civil wars. He’s a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces with over nine...

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Racism in Social Science: Copy, Paste, Repeat (An Urgent Call to Action)

Racism in Social Science: Copy, Paste, Repeat (An Urgent Call to Action)

by Josh Busby | 11 July, 2020 | , ,

This is the second installment in our series on Race&IR.This is a guest post from Ebby L. Abramson who is a Doctoral student in the political science program at the University of Ottawa and a research associate and editor for Endangered Scholars Worldwide. His current research systematically investigates counterterrorism policies in Europe and the United States, examining how these policies account for and impact their respective society. Abramson has worked for the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, the New School, Cardozo School of law, and The George Washington University...

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Modi’s ‘Aggressive’ India has Already Started Making Compromises to China

Modi’s ‘Aggressive’ India has Already Started Making Compromises to China

by Josh Busby | 8 July, 2020 | ,

This is a guest post from Aniruddha Saha, a PhD student at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research examines India’s nuclear policy using a constructivist approach and is currently being funded by a King’s International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. He has also recently published with Strategic Analysis, OpenDemocracy, Eurasia Review and The Quint. With the killing of 20 Indian soldiers by the Chinese army along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) on June 16, several dimensions of the violent border skirmishes between India and China have come to light....

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