The Duck of Minerva

Sorry for the lack of Wednesday linkage posts recently. Bizarrely, on a day when I undertake an intercontinental move, I finally have time to catch up on linking. To commemorate the end of summer teaching and the brief respite between summer school and real school (hey, didn't I join academia so I could have summers off?), here's some links about teaching. Nineteen observations about teaching by Andrew Joseph Pegoda, especially 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, and 18, but not 17. [Inside Higher Ed] Today's Word Power is andragogy, which refers to how to teach adults--an enterprise many Duck writers and...

Welcome to Wednesday's linkage. We've delayed posting until the situation of one major world leader and head of state was resolved, and we can now definitely confirm: King Albert of the Belgians has abdicated. He joins Queen Beatrix and target="_blank">Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani in this year's parade of former crowned heads. Why? Did something else happen today? In more substantive news, Jay Ulfelder makes an obvious but important point: Today's events do constitute a coup, whether they were "polite" or not. In the APSA Comparative Democratization section newsletter, Ben Smith lays...

Phil Schrodt's very smart thoughts about the NSA and surveillance. [A Second Mouse] Anton Strezhnev analyzes the prospects for Snowden's extradition. Strezhnev's take is very smart, but I wonder if he overestimates the degree to which this will be a normal case in which Beijing would not choose to intervene. After all, Snowden fled to Hong Kong because of its reputation for freedom--which is something that Beijing might find convenient in underlining one country, two systems. [Causal Loop] Ben Schmidt has a more interesting and nuanced view on the "crisis in the humanities" than we normally...

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Is Turkey a democracy? Jay Ulfelder is skeptical [Dart-Throwing Chimps] A more optimistic take on Turkey. [Suffragio] Dan Drezner properly criticizes two foreign policy missteps by the Obama administration, including news that Michelle Obama won't attend the PRC-USA summit. Given PRC First Lady Peng Liyuan's successes abroad, this seems like another in a seemingly long line of administration diplomatic misfires. [Daniel Drezner] Forget immigration reform. Are you really surprised? [Kevin Drum] What the age of Rice and Power means for U.S. foreign policy....

A handful of links today, but with content. Dan Drezner discusses China, Thucydides, and the limit of metaphor. It strikes me that Dan's buried the lede here. The question isn't whether Thucydides is applicable to the Sino-American relationship, or whether Tuchman is better, but rather why even Chinese IR professors have adopted the tropes of the Western professoriate. After all, China has its very own history from which to draw analogies, as smart scholars like Victoria Tin-bor Hui and David Kang have reminded Western audiences. The history of the Warring States period seems at least as...