This is the first in a series of remembrances on life and career of the late Susan Sell. When I think about Susan Sell, I think about a life lived unapologetically, beautifully, and gratefully. I think about International Relations theory taught with irreverence and...
The ISA statement lacks not only comparative history but also local historical depth. It also distorts moral responsibility.
I hold a PhD in history from the University of Virginia. Like many graduate students, I began my doctoral program hoping to become a professor. When I decided to pursue a different career, my university didn’t know how to advise me. Here’s what I learned about finding a non-academic job.
This has been either a bad week for Israel, or a great week for Israel, depending on whom you ask or what your Twitter feed looks like. In the end, this may matter more for the relevance and impact of Middle East studies than anything else.
In Marvel comics and movies, Ant-Man is a super-hero who can change his size using a special suit and "Pym particles." When giant, he's...giant. But when he's tiny he keeps the same density as a regular human, giving him the ability to lift and move things much bigger than his insect size. The idea of shrinking in size but having to shoulder the same--or greater--burden resonated with me, and in a way feels like a metaphor for the modern professor. This thought came to me in response to a recent email from my university. We have a hybrid set-up, with some students attending courses remotely...
In September, the UAE and Israel signed "the Abraham Accords," normalizing relations between the UAE and Israel. The Trump Administration presented this as if it was equivalent to the Camp David Accords, a ground-breaking peace agreement that would transform the world. Much of the Middle East policy community, however, met it with a shrug. I'm not sure I'm joining in on that shrug. While it's true Trump exaggerated and misrepresented the deal, as he is wont to do, I worry a sneaky "common wisdom" has developed among observers that may obscure the significant impacts of this agreement. The...
Recently, I was asked by an interdisciplinary journal to edit a special section on climate governance, and I inquired whether it was an open access journal where authors have to pay to publish. It is, and I declined because asking others to contribute to a special issue that they then have to pay to publish in strikes me as unseemly. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this model of publishing, but I dislike the existing paywall mafia too. Pay to Publish?This is the third time I've had open access fees come up in the process of publishing in journals in the energy/science policy space. The other...
This is a guest post from Laura Breen, a PhD student with research interests in international law, global governance, and emerging technology; Gaea Morales, a PhD student with research interests in environmental security and global-local linkages; Joseph Saraceno, a PhD candidate with research interests in political institutions and quantitative methodology; and Kayla Wolf, a PhD student with research interests in gender, politics, and political socialization. All are completing the PhD program in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. It’s...
We open each of my undergrad classes with a discussion of current events. In the past four years, there have been several times that students have wondered whether a war may be about to break out: between America and North Korea, America and Venezuela, India and China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia...America and Iran. We spend a lot of time talking about the issues, the motivations for each state's behavior. And when "nothing" happens, I always wonder whether all the time we spent was worth it. I'm wondering the same thing about tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. If the situation defuses...
With the coronavirus, it has been hard for many of us to just keep going, let alone set aside time to blog (certainly not as much as we otherwise might!). So, we wanted to acknowledge that by giving our guest Ducks from last year an additional semester (at least!) to have this platform for talking about substantive issues in international relations and the academy. We are thrilled that folks have stayed on. Please read their work to date and be on the lookout for new posts. There are some really good ones on a range of topics. If you have an interest in becoming a guest contributor come...
This is the fifth post in the our series Race&IR. Black Lives Matter has spearheaded a massive reckoning of race relations in the US and around the world, but not so much in Russia. The discipline of IR may have started a bit earlier than this year’s protests: there have been a number of interventions that have brought the issue of race to the forefront of teaching and research – even though it should have always been there at least since DuBois. Not everyone is happy though: right-wing media cry “cancel culture” and debates on the merits of critical approaches somehow...
I'm working on a new project about the use of religion in power politics (part of which I'll be presenting "at" APSA this week). I'm finding good evidence, but the framing is tricky. Religion as a power political tool happens, and matters, but it rarely works out the way the wielders intended. Is this an example of ideas mattering in international relations, or an example of their limits? The fact that I feel forced into such a binary reflects a broader issue in the sub-field. As we all learn in Intro to IR, the study of ideas revolves around constructivism. With the emergence of neorealism...