For Mearsheimer “freedom” and “prosperity” are simply weapons of great power politics rather than aspirations sought by the Ukrainian people.
The Invasion of Ukraine is Russia’s Fault
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Academia
Practicing Academic Kindness in the Classroom
This is a guest post by Philipp Schulz, who is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. Philipp’s research focuses...
When 70% is good enough
When I was a grad student, I had the privilege of student teaching with political theorist Eric MacGilvray. Eric was—and I’m sure still is—a brilliant teacher. He was always in motion, but in a way...
It’s Duckies time!
This is a guest post from Kindred Winecoff, current Chair of the Online Media Caucus for ISA. The Online Achievement in International Studies Reception and Awarding of the Duckies will take place on...
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Submit your proposals!!! 2015 ISSS-ISAC Conference: Global Trends on War, Conflict and Political Violence
Charli and I, along with a few other colleagues here in the Five Colleges are hosting this year's joint annual conference of the International Security Studies Section and International Security and Arms Control Section of ISA and APSA. The conference will be held Oct. 8 - 10 -- fall break weekend and peak fall foliage in New England! The conference theme is Global Trends in War and Political Violence. Over the past century, we have witnessed episodes of extreme interstate and intrastate violence as well as periods of relative stability and decline in war and armed conflict. We're looking...
Much Ado About Nothing (Very Intellectually or Politically Important)?
The following is a guest post by Jeffrey C. Isaac, the James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. What constitutes important political science research? This question has been much discussed lately in connection with “When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality,” an article by Michael J. LaCour and Donald P. Green published in Science magazine. The reason for the attention is straightforward: because the piece was apparently based on fraudulent data, the article has become a veritable scandal. In the...
Surfing the Cesspool: Political Science Rumors and the LaCour Scandal
This is a guest post submitted by Chris Barker, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southwestern College For the past three weeks, “Political Science Rumors” (PSR) has been on fire over a falsified data scandal involving Michael LaCour’s research showing that the presence of a gay canvasser changes how respondents report feeling about gays. The scandal has achieved national prominence, with stories running in the New York Mag, NPR, the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, and Buzzfeed. UCLA graduate student David Broockman (posting as “Reannon”) first broke the story on the...
Blogging the Gap
Yesterday, I had the chance to participate in the Bridging the Gap workshop led by Bruce Jentleson. It is an effort every summer to help younger scholars figure out how to engage the policy world in a variety of ways, including figuring out how to write and publish op-eds, how to get into government for short periods of time (like the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship that changed my career/life), how to engage think tanks and more. I arrived the day before and watched other folks (Michael Horowitz, Emily Goldman, Peter Feaver) talk about their government...
The Latest in the Data Fraud Scandal
This blog mostly focuses on IR, but this story has implications for all doing social science, as the accuser at the center of the conversation asserts quite clearly. So, I am posting the latest and most thorough account of how this played out thus far here. There are many questions to ask, but the one asked directly in the piece is: how does one deal with flawed work? Attacking the quality of research is one thing--that is what lit reviews are all about--but the integrity of scholars? As the piece suggests, that is tricky business indeed. This is not the end of the story by any means,...
After Tenure
While the lead up to tenure is often terrifyingly stressful, even attaining that goal is a bit daunting as it raises the question, "Now what?" I suppose on some level one can then set one's sights on the next thing, Full Professor, but that obviously doesn't have the same significance in terms of career and life trajectory that tenure does. Getting tenure raises all sorts of questions about what you want to be when you grow up, if a life in the academy makes you happy, or if the kind of life you are leading in the academy is what you want to be doing. When I first started graduate school, I...
Online Media Caucus Call for Papers for ISA 2016 Reminder
Our new caucus seeks to promote the use of online media in our teaching, research, policy engagement and service. We have a broad imagination both about what we mean by online media and what kinds of papers/panels would be of interest. Online media include social media such as twitter, blogging, facebook, tumblr, and the like, but also the use of the internet for surveys, simulations, data repositories, virtual meetings, and more. We are in interested in papers/panels that are research-oriented (using the internet in one’s research), pedagogical (internet in the classroom, online...
The Freedom to Speak Up As Academics: The Right to Make An “Ass” of Myself Personally
On Thursday, I became part of a growing group of academics that has had a letter like this written about them: As a parent, I’ve been doing some advocacy about my children’s school this year. The advocacy received some local media attention recently when my children’s District Administration tried to defend an activity that violated federal privacy rights. Luckily, I’m in a department where, instead of encouraging me to be silent, senior faculty advised me to frame the letter and include it in my annual evaluation under “service.” I love my university and I love the fact that I’m still...