“Some came to kill and the others came to protect” says the main male character with a charisma of a doorknob to his love interest in the “based on real events” movie “Crimea” (2017), financed by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The hour and a half epic features...
This post was written by Marie Berry and Milli Lake, co-founders and principal investigators of the Women’s Rights After War Project. Dr. Berry is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of...
In the spirit of holiday cheer and Paul Musgrave's great Foreign Policy piece "The True Meaning of Christmas Movies Is a Cozy American Worldview" as well as our common poli sci curse of "being...
This piece is written by Bridging the Gap co-Director Naazneen H. Barma, Director of the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, Scrivner Chair, and Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel...
A co-authored post by Dr Leena Vastapuu and Dr Maria Martin de Almagro. The first elected woman head of state in Africa, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has just stepped down from her office in Liberia. Her successor George Weah assumed the position on 22 January 2018. In a recent interview with CNN entitled “Why Africa owes a debt of gratitude to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf”, President Sirleaf and journalist Chude Jideonwo had the following exchange. Chude Jideonwo (CJ): You are in your final days as the first female president of an African country. When you step down, there won’t be any more....
With an avalanche of news about the government shutdown, DACA, CHIP and Stormy Daniels, the American news media did not have too much time to cover Putin’s nipples (this time around), even though it was a great opportunity to update the famous horse riding photograph. On the Russian Orthodox Epiphany night Putin was photographed bathing in ice cold water in the Seliger Lake, displaying both his Orthodox Christian devoutness and manly sass. Why does he do that? While for some in the West these displays of machismo can seem gay, in Russia they are gobbled up as the ultimate display of...
Any woman would tell you that. What matters is what you do with it and whether you know how to use it. Whatever Brobdingnagian thing you’ve got going on there, it’s way more important to have a game plan and understand the sweet spots you need to target. Otherwise, both parties may come away less than satisfied from the encounter. I am talking, of course, about the nuclear arsenal size and the ever-lasting dick-measuring contest that is international politics. After the ridiculous Trump tweet that Kim John Un’s nuclear button is smaller and less powerful than that of #45, IR Twitter was...
2017 was not a great year for international politics. The sentence I heard the most during conferences and other academic gatherings was that “the global order is in crisis.” Granted. It all started in 2016 with the victory of Trump, Brexit and the No to the Peace Agreement in Colombia. Nationalist ideologies have nothing but grown in 2017, when the victories of Marine Le Pen in France and of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands all of a sudden seemed plausible. Luckily, they did not materialise. We also had auto-proclaimed nations that demanded independence, such as Catalonia or Kurdistan. To...
“The women who accused Harvey Weinstein did not act as women. Because sexual harassment - well, that's great, honestly. And if you have a role, what difference does it make how you got it. […] In general, how can a man be accused of sexual harassment, is it not what he exists in this world for? If he has the power that he uses in this way, that's good. It's wonderful when a man who has so much power is sexually harassing you, isn’t it?” No, it isn’t. But that is what a relatively famous Russian actress Lyubov Tolkalina had to say about the Hollywood scandal. Even though in the same article...
As one of the new Ducks, I will from now on be posting diversely on a range of topics including political violence, the status of critique in IR, and professional issues that will be of particular interest to early career scholars and PhD students. For my first post, however, I want to write about the style of writing IR and/or Political Science. This is something that has troubled me for some time now and on which – I think – I depart slightly from the mainstream view of things. To begin, let me quote the author’s ‘style’ guidelines for the ISA journal International Studies Quarterly: Favor...
The next US presidential elections are around the corner and the Democrat US President has already announced that he will not run for the Presidency again. He defines himself as pro-choice, and it is now up to the Vice President, a woman, to position herself – and fast – on the issue of women’s rights to abortion. She also needs to propose the maximum number of weeks up to which it is acceptable to have an abortion. Because she is the only woman candidate to the Presidency, her team believes her opinion will be taken seriously by the electorate. The team encourages Selina to start her...
As one of the new Ducks, I'm linking to bits and pieces catching my eye/getting me thinking for the first time this morning. Enjoy! Academia Handy guidance on 'how to get rid of your fake academic self' supplied by David Berliner. APSA I wasn't at APSA but John Yoo put in a controversial appearance along with the iconic orange jumpsuit and a barrage of protesters. See APSA members' letter against the appearance and APSA's response (and let's never forget the Torture Memos). .. & the award for the best #APSA2017 tweet goes to @mia_iris_costa! Cuba-US Relations New kind of attack alert:...