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

A Failure to Communicate?

by Steve Saideman | 7 July, 2012 |

Political science, alas, has been facing much hostility as of late.  Selected out by a Republican for de-funding, attacked by one of our own in a highly publicized and reputed piece, it is time that we wielded our tools to figure out what is going on.  Thankfully, Huber, Dowling and Hill have done some social science: surveys with some random selection to assess how people feel about Political Science compared to Psychology and Computer Science.  They find that people in general support NSF funding for political science less than for the other two with independents and Republicans far more...

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When Political Scientists Do Not Understand Political Science

by Steve Saideman | 24 June, 2012 |

[cross-posted at SSSpew]When Political Scientists Do Not Understand Political Science .... they get published in the New York Times.I tried, I really tried, to ignore the screed at the NYT against political science (especially of the quant variety), but Jacqueline Stevens's rant is such a poor effort that I know it will be widely read and influential.  Why?  Because bad ideas often spread further and faster than good ones (see Clash of Civilizations).There are so many things wrong with this piece that it is hard to know where to start.  First, I am , of course, much of what this women hates...

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The State of the Art in the Social Science of Pop Culture

by Steve Saideman | 12 June, 2012 |

Slate posted a piece on the academic study of pop culture.  It found that academics studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer most.  Well, actually, no, it found that more folks studied the Buffy than the Matrix, the Simpsons, Aliens or The Wire.This led to a Facebook discussion of selection bias.  We can discuss the merits of these five and ponder why the Simpsons did so poorly (perhaps we need a consistent plot progression?), or why the Wire is under-valued yet again.  That the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies sucked so much that they sucked all the air out of the studying the Matrix enterprise? But what...

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SHIELD and the US: How Realistic Is the Avengers Movie?

by Steve Saideman | 8 May, 2012 |

I guess I should not be surprised at this news that the Pentagon did not cooperate with Marvel Studios to make The Avengers movie (h/t to Jacob Levy for pointing this piece out to me).  After all, immediately after seeing the movie, I enumerated the many principal-agent problems illustrated in the movie, and the military abhors P-A problems.  It turns out that the Pentagon found unrealistic not the part about the Norse Gods, the large green rage-machine (best depiction yet by Ruffalo and Whedon), nor the un-icing of a Super-soldier.  Nope, the unrealistic part was:“We couldn’t reconcile the...

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Political Scientist Provides Heaps of Perspective Sauce

by Steve Saideman | 3 May, 2012 |

An academic friend of mine and of other Duck folks, Patricia Weitsman, has gone through hell over the past two years.  Today is the the anniversary of her "re-birth" as last year on May 3rd she had a bone marrow transplant.  This was to fight Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a precursor to Leukemia. Just in the past year, she has gone through:treatment, transplant, broken ankle, multiple pulmonary embolisms in both lungs, residual host cells in the marrow 100 days post transplant, osteoporosis, chemo induced ovarian failure (pre to post menopause and XX to XY virtually overnight), Graft versus Host...

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The Civil-Military Relations of Footwear

by Steve Saideman | 25 April, 2012 |

I have never really paid attention to shoes, my own or those of the opposite sex.  But the past year has taught me that one form of footwear seems to be most important: boots.  Boots on the ground vs no boots on the ground.  Politicians making promises about no boots on the ground were all the rage last year at this time--that the US, Canada, and the rest of NATO would meet the language of non-occupation in the UN resolution governing the Libyan intervention by not putting any boots on the ground.What is lovely about this is that we now have essentially termed all ground-pounders (soldiers,...

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Pop Cuture Meets Social Science: Beautiful Marriage

by Steve Saideman | 11 April, 2012 |

 Check out this post where Brett Keller uses sophisticated social science statistical methods to ascertain how badly fixed the Hunger Games depicted in the novel/movie are.  All I can say is that we live in a wonderful time where folks can radically over-think some pop culture and then disseminate widely and quickly via Al Gore's internet.  Indeed, all Alan Sepinwall has to do is ask the internet, and it provides him with the rules for True American must mere hours after the game was presented on New Girl.Anyhow, back to the Hunger Games analysis--I am now beginning to regret not teaching...

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Was Charli a Victim of ISA Ultimate?

by Steve Saideman | 7 April, 2012 |

 I cannot say for sure, the last we saw of her was running deep towards the endzone looking for a long throw.  We are left with a mystery--what happened to the Friday nerd blogging?  Thus, I must leap into the fray (since I was the one with the disk looking to throw deep) with this:

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Ultimate IR

by Steve Saideman | 28 March, 2012 |

Forget about whether we are too narrow, too closed, too whatever.  Instead, figure out this: can I make time for Ultimate at the ISA in San Diego?  Yes, yes, you can. Due to popular demand, I have organized a time and a place for an informal game of Ultimate.  As the picture below shows, there is a field next to the hotel that we can use for a quick game.  All you need to bring are white and dark shirts and your enthusiasm.  I will provide the frisbees and the field markers. No cleats, please.  This will be a spirited but low intensity game.  I am staying at the Hilton if you need to contact...

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Academia 101: Writing a CV

by Steve Saideman | 20 March, 2012 |

A twitter discussion got me thinking about this.  We end up reading tons of CVs, developing opinions and pondering what people are thinking. First, there are no real rules for writing a CV except these:Read other people's cv's to get a sense of what looks normal (don't be strange).Take care so that it is not messy, has no typos (twitterfightclub pressure has killed my typing skills), and so on.Unless your audience is just a bunch of dim-witted bureaucrats, do not pad the CV.  Most profs have been there, done that, so they can see stuff that is just crap used to make the CV longer.  It has...

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