The Duck of Minerva

Steve Saideman

Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.

Recent Posts

Citation Counts are Like Democracy

by Steve Saideman | 7 October, 2013 |

There is much gnashing about citations of late.  This tweet inspired the ensuing spew below: Formula predicts research papers' future citations https://t.co/4Hy8j3Glqj. I am afraid the citation game is getting out of hand. — John Panaretos (@J_Panaretos) October 5, 2013 But also this series of posts at the Monkey Cage last week on gender bias in citations (the link points to the final piece in the series, so it has links to the rest of the posts) raises questions about using citations as a metric of success.   If the numbers are problematic, what should we do? Let's move back a step. ...

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The Numbers Do Not Lie: People Don’t Like Numbers

by Steve Saideman | 26 September, 2013 |

Perhaps the first Monkey Cage post at the Washington Post presents some numbers that show that policy-makers tend not to like the higher tech kind of poli sci (or theory)  We knew this from previous TRIP reports and other studies, but still it is important to consider such stuff, especially given that quantitative work (in IR, anyway) is now about as prevalent as non-quant work. One might be tempted to argue that we should stop or reduce quant work given that a key audience may not like it so much.  My first reaction was to think about baseball.  The rise of statistics to evaluate...

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PhD or Not a PhD

by Steve Saideman | 12 September, 2013 |

It was perhaps appropriate that yesterday's tale of a young pundit's career unraveling due to falsely claimed PhD coincided with the first meeting of the Doctoral Research Seminar I am teaching. Elizabeth O'Bagy had given the impression that she had finished her dissertation, but apparently not so much.  After tweeting about it, I got some push back--how big of a sin is this?  Do academics have a role in gate-keeping/outing those who lie about their credentials? My answers: big in academia and hell, yeah.  To clarify this, let's focus on what a PhD is.  It is not a certificate that says you...

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Hypotheses Tested

by Steve Saideman | 7 September, 2013 |

The Duck has a symposium which engages the European Journal of International Relation's special issue on "The End of IR Theory."  One of the pieces is the final version of the draft that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated last winter.  If y'all remember, I had a few words to say about the paper.  In short, I was not a fan.  Now that the final version is out and they have a post at the Duck, I could take more swings at it, but I don't think that is necessary as Dan Reiter has an excellent and much more succinct take on it.  Plus I said much of it last January. Instead, other than a...

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Friday Nerd Blogging: Into Darkness

by Steve Saideman | 23 August, 2013 |

Sure, the movie came out months back, but this Honest Trailers does a nice job of capturing why Star Trek Into Darkness was meh.  JJ Abrams does not apparently get it that the even numbered movies are supposed to be better. Spoilers boldly go below: This video is perhaps inconsistent in pointing out the retrograde gender dynamics in the movie, but gets its point across.  

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Learning the Wrong Lessons? Who Should Blog?

by Steve Saideman | 21 August, 2013 |

In the past week, there has been a heap of controversy here over a post that many folks found to be offensive.  In reaction, the blogger is ceasing to blog, Charli  discuss the challenges of blogging, and others still are drawing lessons, such as Christopher Zorn who posted on his FB page "the vast majority of academic political scientists are just not cut out to be bloggers, and probably shouldn't do so." My reaction to this is: blogger is a label that describes a whole lot of activity, so saying people should not blog might mean that they should not write on the internet.  Or it might mean...

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