The Duck of Minerva

Peter Henne

Peter Henne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Global and Regional Studies Program at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on global religious politics and the Middle East. His first book, Islamic Politics, Muslim States and Counterterrorism Tensions, was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press and he is currently working on a book analyzing how states try to use religion in foreign policy. His scholarly research has been published in International Journal of Religion, International Studies Perspectives, Journal of Church and State, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Politics and Religion, Religions, States and Societies, and Terrorism and Political Violence. In addition to the Duck, he has written for the Washington Post's Monkeycage, Political Violence at a Glance and The Huffington Post.

Recent Posts

Chain-ganging in reverse? Gulf states and US hostility towards Iran

Chain-ganging in reverse? Gulf states and US hostility towards Iran

by Peter Henne | 16 December, 2019 | , , ,

I had a piece in the Washington Post's "Monkeycage" over the weekend, which you can read here. I noted that many worry Saudi Arabia and the UAE will pull America into war with Iran. But it actually looks like they're the ones restraining us. The piece was inspired by the famous "chain-ganging" dynamic in IR scholarship, but there was little discussion of that as it was geared towards a broader audience, so I wanted to expand here. I suspect most readers of this site had to read Christensen and Snyder's "Chain gangs and passed bucks" at some point. In case you didn't, the argument is...

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This op-ed shows what’s wrong with US foreign policy

This op-ed shows what’s wrong with US foreign policy

by Peter Henne | 13 December, 2019 |

Today, Ryan Crocker--career foreign service officer and former Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan--wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing its criticism of the Afghanistan war he oversaw. He pointed to progress made in Afghanistan, which is fair (and doesn't necessarily contradict anything in the Post's reporting), but generally did little to directly undermine worries about the war. Beyond that, as I noted in a frustrated Twitter thread earlier today, he showed off a lot of what's wrong with US foreign policy. I spent 11 years in Washington, DC, doing the usual young professional...

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IR, it’s time to talk about what the “multiple comparisons issue” really is

IR, it’s time to talk about what the “multiple comparisons issue” really is

by Peter Henne | 15 November, 2019 | ,

As a reviewer and recipient of reviews, I've noted a recent trend among IR papers. A study uses cross-national data with regression analysis, and runs multiple models with different variables or sub-sets of the data. Sometimes the results are consistent, sometimes they aren't. But often a reviewer will object to the study's validity, pointing to the "multiple comparisons" issue. Multiple comparisons can be a real problem in quantitative IR studies, but I worry we're mis-diagnosing it. What do I mean? Imagine we're writing a paper on interstate conflict. We could measure conflict onset,...

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A bigger question in the alt-ac debate

A bigger question in the alt-ac debate

by Peter Henne | 8 November, 2019 |

I had a kind of unique path to my current tenure-track job, straddling the policy-academia divide. So I've followed current discussions on "alt-ac" careers with interest, but found something lacking in them. Nathan Paxton's recent interview with APSA crystallized that; the bigger question is not how to support alt-ac PhDs but how to counsel people before getting PhDs in the first place. As I've discussed, I sort of followed the "alt-ac" approach in the first part of my career. For those who haven't seen it, "alt-ac" means "alternative academic," referring to PhDs who pursue jobs outside of...

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Has regression analysis shrunk our imaginations?

Has regression analysis shrunk our imaginations?

by Peter Henne | 25 October, 2019 |

I realize this is a weird thing for me to ask, since the vast majority of my publications--as well as a few of my works in progress--have relied on regression. But I was wondering this recently based on my own and others' responses to a new project. I was presenting qualitative research recently that tried to make the case for ideas mattering in a conventional security studies topic (I'm being intentionally vague). I had a lot of evidence that it did, but the way it mattered was bit more nuanced than the way material factors mattered. An audience member took issue not with my evidence, but...

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What do new Turkish university campuses have to do with Trump’s Syria decision?

What do new Turkish university campuses have to do with Trump’s Syria decision?

by Peter Henne | 7 October, 2019 | , ,

So by this point we all know the big news on Syria. Overnight, Trump announced that--after consulting with Turkish President Erdogan--the US would be pulling troops out of north Syria, giving Turkey freedom to operate. This would likely involve military actions against Kurdish forces there, which Turkey fears are coordinating with Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. This is concerning for two reasons. First, the United States had worked with these Kurdish forces to fight ISIS, so we're basically abandoning them. Second, this will basically leave ISIS detention camps unguarded, possibly letting...

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Want to fix peer review? Standardize appeals

Want to fix peer review? Standardize appeals

by Peter Henne | 1 October, 2019 | ,

It's happened to all of us. You get that email "Decision on Manuscript...," open it with a bit of trepidation, just to find a (hopefully) politely worded rejection from the editor. Sometimes this is justified. Other times, however, the rejection is due to the legendary "Reviewer #2," a cranky, ill-informed, hastily written rant against your paper that is not at all fair. The details can vary--they don't like your theoretical approach, don't understand the methods, are annoyed you didn't cite them--but the result is the same: thanks to a random draw from the editor's reviewers list you've got...

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If you mention the evangelical delegation to Saudi Arabia, I’d have to ask which one

If you mention the evangelical delegation to Saudi Arabia, I’d have to ask which one

by Peter Henne | 13 September, 2019 | , ,

The other day, Emily McFarlan Miller--a journalist with Religion News Service--noted a sense of deja vu. The AP had an article on a delegation of US evangelicals who travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet with Mohammed bin Salman, the country's Crown Prince (and effective ruler). The deja vu was because there was a similar delegation--with some of the same individuals--last year, which she wrote about at the time. These repeated visits, and the visitors' response to the conservative Islamic Kingdom, are surprising, and may represent a shift in how evangelical elites view Saudi Arabia. The 2018...

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Wait…what about Iran?

Wait…what about Iran?

by Peter Henne | 6 September, 2019 | ,

Remember this summer, when we were about to go to war with Iran? Iran seized an oil tanker passing through the Persian Gulf. Iran also shot down a US drone. The United States responded by shooting down an Iranian drone flying near a US ship, and nearly launching an air strike against Iran. The United States also expanded sanctions on Iran. With Trump's behavior becoming...unpredictable, and hawkish advisers like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo seemingly ascendant in the Administration, some sort of military clash appeared likely. But at some point this likely event kind of...faded away. It's...

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Thoughts on making the most of APSA for the alt-ac attendee

Thoughts on making the most of APSA for the alt-ac attendee

by Peter Henne | 26 August, 2019 | , ,

Graduation Cap and Diploma on White with Soft Shadow. C/o Bluestocking, 2008 Uyen Le APSA is nearly upon us again, and I thought I should write something profession-related as I got back into blogging. My first thought was to make fun of annoying questions, but I already did that (six years ago...but still relevant). And there is a lot of advice floating around for grad students or others on the market. Instead, I thought I'd focus on an area where my experience is more unique: navigating academic conferences while working outside academia (or alt-ac*) and--in my case--trying to get back in....

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