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

Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 13 June, 2013 |

There has been plenty of commentary on Edward Snowden (Nexon, Toobin, Roger Simon, interesting counterpoint from Jack Shafer here), but I'm a little bit amazed that important government secrets are entrusted to a 29 year old high school dropout who unilaterally gets the chance to decide what's in the national interest. I respect the idea of whistleblowers, but something about the tone of interviews with this guy struck me as dime store political philosophy from the Wachowski brothers. To the business at hand: here is your Thursday morning linkage! On the lighter side, cheetahs are effective...

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Who’s on Duck?

Who’s on Duck?

by Josh Busby | 6 June, 2013 |

Having been newly promoted to permanent contributor, I'm delighted to join the esteemed Duck blogging crew (pictured above) on a more long-term basis. I'm looking forward to more lengthy substantive blog posts beyond the Thursday updates. I feel like I've been trapped in reviewer hell for weeks, just as it looked like I was clearing my inbox of book and article reviews, I kept getting another one in and the pieces always looked vaguely interesting. Taking note of Dan Nexon's recent post about the difficulty journals have in getting reviews (let alone quality ones), I determined that I had to...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 6 June, 2013 |

Ok, last week, I mentioned with anticipation how much I was looking forward to Game of Thrones. Little did I know it was the Red Wedding episode. I've looked for lighter fare stories this week and only sometimes does the world oblige. On the hopeful side of things, here is some good news: A look back at the millions of lives saved through PEPFAR: 10 years later A photographer captured all of the rare birds of paradise species in Papua New Guinea The EU moves to curb overfishing with lower quotas: enforcement and removal of subsidies still key A new cheap vinegar test can help cut cervical...

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Thursday Dinklage

Thursday Dinklage

by Josh Busby | 30 May, 2013 |

If you are like me, you are pining for your next installment of Game of Thrones (and the Memorial Day week off was cruel, though not as cruel as the torment we have seen of late). In the meantime, I give you your weekly dose of Thursday Morning Dinklage. Top stories this week: Steve Walt puts the flawed but necessary peer review process in perspective Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's letter to oft-dead Mokhtar Belmokhtar for his unwillingness to be a good team player has been translated and is a classic (I sense a new Sahel version of The Office) Belmokhtar's group pulls off some new...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 23 May, 2013 |

Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage. I'm going to start off with my usual conservation theme before turning to some other topics like a kerfuffle over mapping racial tolerance and the World Health Assembly (going on this week). Amphibians are in trouble all across the U.S. and world (disease, climate change, farm chemicals), along with bees and bats, nature is trying to tell us something Chinese bear bile farms are generating an uproar - in China! Fish have been moving to cooler water for decades in reaction to climate change Did you see the cross-national map of racial tolerance that lit...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 16 May, 2013 |

With the semester coming to an end, time to hit the Internets and start blogging more regularly. I've been meaning to write one for months about the poaching crisis. It's coming. In the meantime, here is yet another story on the corrosive effects on governance by Sudanese elephant poachers in the Central African Republic. Elsewhere, it's not been a good week for the Obama Administration but good news for team O, the media agree that the Benghazi mess has been overblown: David Brooks on the scapegoating of State Department hand Victoria Neuland Jeffrey Goldberg concurs that Susan Rice was not...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 9 May, 2013 |

Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage, starting with some energy and environment links: Illegal fish trade costs $10 billion to $23 billion in global losses each eyar China's coal mining companies and coal burning power plants accounted for 15% of the country's total freshwater withdrawals China leading the United States on climate change? Charles Mann on the perils of petro-energy abundance (Drezner dissents) In other news, Syria is heating up in the news with Israel's strikes over the weekend putting pressure on the Obama administration to do more: C.J. Chivers remarks on spending time...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 2 May, 2013 |

Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage. Back on the Africa theme from a couple of weeks ago, here are some good reads from the week: More reports on the elephant poaching crisis in CAR Last rhinos in Mozambique killed by poachers with the help of park rangers; time for Kruger fences to come back up Alex de Waal trolls celebrity activists like Enough, Kony 2012, faults them for insufficient consultation with local actors on the ground Nigerian military over-reacted and killed a bunch of citizens in the north: Boko Haram recruitment advertisement Abuamerican, American jihadi gone to Somalia,...

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Policy-Relevant Research, Redux

Policy-Relevant Research, Redux

by Josh Busby | 1 May, 2013 | ,

e-International Relations asked me to write a piece about doing policy-relevant research. I thought I'd cross-post it here, especially timely given recent posts on this blog along with Ronald Rogowski's screed that our work is too policy-relevant but policymakers just don't want to hear what we are saying (HT: The Monkey Cage). Here is the full post: During graduate school, the community of up and coming scholars who wanted to do policy-relevant research seemed a bit like Fight Club. It was something each of us secretly wanted to pursue but were reluctant to talk about in public. We found...

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Thursday Morning Linkage

Thursday Morning Linkage

by Josh Busby | 24 April, 2013 |

If last's week Thursday morning linkage was Africa-themed, this week's links are China-related and inevitably harken back to the events in Boston: Laurie Garrett, as she is wont to do, wonders if this recent bird flu outbreak in China is "the big one" Beijing air is so bad they are canceling recess, kids at grave risk Oh, and Shanghai air sucks too China's shale gas revolution has yet to begin (Armond Cohen thinks it will take too long to take off) Japanese tree die-off blamed on air pollution from China New bilateral effort between U.S. and China to address climate change Chinese demand for...

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