Decolonial methods, and the bringing of attention to race in knowledge production is necessarily historical. It demands a close re-reading of archives, forgotten texts, and sometimes “canonical” works. As a result, through this special issue and the wider work the authors build upon, we now have a very different understanding of the historical entanglements of race and international affairs knowledge.
UPDATE: As a commenter helpfully pointed out, the person whose tweet I'm responding to was a political science Professor, not a historian. This kind of messes with the framing of this post but...
Like many, I woke up in shock at the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. The earthquake, centered in Gaziantep, has killed 3,000 as of Monday afternoon devastated southeast Turkey and...
A distinctly unoriginal take on the pathologies of overvaluing academic “novelty.”
The way that APSA leaders handled the Claremont Institute situation was troubling… will APSA, as an organization, be committed to some broadly liberal democratic values?
So the New York Times reported on Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University, resigning from her post as head of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy because of donor pressure. There's a lot at stake in this. As an academic field, grand strategy has a reputation for being very conservative, and for advocating a didactic, great-man view of history. The Yale program has not only been the premier school for grand strategy, inspiring a few similar programs at similarly prestigious universities; it has also been the premier focal point for critics of grand strategy who see it as...
Academic freedom is a very important value. Professional integrity is another. Both values admit complexity, and are the subject of reasonable disagreement among colleagues and leaders of academic institutions. At the same time, the modern academy would not be what it is, or at least aspires to be, were it not for these values. A very wide range of behaviors are consistent with and protected by these values. But for these values to have meaning, there also must be certain things that are simply beyond the pale. Is 21st century American fascism beyond the pale of the...
The academic job market is terrible. It’s worse for international students.
While political comedy thrives, IR comedy, whatever that phrase might mean, is virtually non-existent. omedy gap’? Is it a figment of my imagination or a real problem?
The twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone. We've reflected on what led to the attacks, its human toll, how well America handled it, and what impacts the US response has had on the world. I thought it was also worth asking what effects these attacks had on the sub-field of international relations, particularly mainstream security studies. The answer? Not much. As a result of these attacks, IR should have abandoned its secular, state-centric focus and explored these interconnecting elements of the twentieth century, revolutionizing the...
Taking my children to their dance class yesterday morning in Quincy, MA I found, as the traffic ground to a halt, the town center draped in red, white, and blue bunting. A giant flag hung suspended from two cranes. A parade, I was told, was in the offing. To anyone not looking at a calendar the scene would easily be confused for the celebration of America’s national day on the Fourth of July. But whereas July Fourth marks an event of success—national self-determination—yesterday marks a day of loss. But also failure. Failure of Americans and their policymakers in the run up to the September...
Many of academia’s core institutions are ‘held together by masking tape and pixie dust.’ But do they also rely on fantastical notions of academic karma?