The Duck of Minerva

For the last few years in particular, there has been a marked increase in the number of sessional, casual, teaching-only, adjunct, fixed term, temporary job 'opportunities' listed and circulated in the usual IR job venues. These various titles and categories point to one reality: precarious labor is a permanent reality within academia. The trend has been quantified and well documented: in US in the last 30 years the percentage of positions held by tenured or tenure-track faculty members fell from 56.8% to 35.1%. In an excellent post in the Chronicle, Peter Conn declares "Full-time tenured...

January for academics is like September for the fashion industry. Rather than fresh lipstick shades and new boots, 'tis the season to start fresh, to organize your office, shake off the pre-Christmas crumbs from your desk, and try to tackle the year with enthusiasm and a fresh perspective. Time to forget about the academic resolutions you didn't keep last year and start fresh with some new (and hopefully more realistic) objectives. Feel free to add some of your own to the comments section. 1. Stay away from Political Science Job Rumors. (www.poliscijobrumors.com) Seriously, why does anyone-...

Have yourself a gender-neutral Christmas, let your toys be yellow. From now on our princess costumes and toy guns will be out of sight.... Well, you try to rhyme with this material. The Daily Mail asked yesterday "how to shop for gender neutral toys" noting the sea of blue and pink dividing stores like Toys R Us. But when Toys R Us introduced a gender-neutral toy catalog, in Sweden, France, Finland, Norway, Germany, Denmark and France- featuring Spider-Man pushing a pink pram and a young girl wielding a gun- conservatives bucked, calling the images brainwashing and 'male hatred.' Play...

Well it is officially December- and you know what that means...all the hipsters and single dudes can finally shave off their Movember moustaches (those are the only men who participate, right?). Movember is a fundraiser for testicular cancer that has gained traction (in 2012 the campaign raised 29 million in Australia, where the idea originated) to the point where the moustache has become a symbol for cancer awareness. But is Movember racist and sexist? According to Arianne Shahvis at the New Statesmen, Movember is not all it is cracked up to be. She notes that the campaign's call for "real...

Two steps forward, two steps back. Just as three women completed training in the Marines for the first time- and as the US Military works to integrate women in to the combat arms, a top female US Colonel has lost her job because she asked for "average looking women" to be used in communications. Col. Lynette Arnhart had been leading the effort to open more infantry roles for women in the army by January 1 2016. Politico first broke this story, noting that Arnhart had recommended avoiding using attractive women in communications because: “In general, ugly women are perceived as competent...