Things have been rough for Canada. It's engulfed in political turmoil, as Justin Trudeau steps down from leadership and the country braces for a contentious election. Incoming US President Donald Trump has decided to pick on the country, threatening ruinous (to both...
As someone who studies terrorism and religion, I approach each Christmas with dread due to the possibility of terrorist attacks around the holiday. A string of bombings hit churches in Indonesia and...
I wrote a chapter for a newly published edited volume, Teaching Political Science and International Relations for Early Career Instructors. The volume itself, capably edited by Michael P.A. Murphy...
Professor Jason Ralph joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent has known Jason's work for two decades, but only fairly recently met him in person. Jason grew up in the village of Norton Canes...
Ah, the avalanche of racism and misogyny that came after the Kamala Harris announcement. The “Kamala is not really black” narrative has been dissected by Adam Serwer in great detail. Spoiler alert: all of these “DEI” discussions are inherently racist and white supremacist because they assume that...
The implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend remain unclear. Will it lead him to strike a more conciliatory tone during the upcoming Republican National Convention? Will it make more Americans sympathize with him? And then there are the questions of what led to...
A lot of ink has been spilled and bytes spent on the reflections over Trump's failed assassination this past weekend. I won't pretend I know better, although as a regular academic that's kind of my job and an occupational hazard. But as soon as my co-author texted me about the events in Butler,...
When I was but a lad, it was still quite common for foreign-policy hawks to invoke “Munich” as an all-purpose rebuttal to compromise with (they would say the “appeasement of”) rival states, most notably the Soviet Union. The failure of the 1938 agreement — which handed Adolf Hitler and the Third...
In the recent Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee makes a rationalist argument—“colonization projects” are “characterized by a triangle of actors—settlers, indigenes, and the central state,” and for his purposes, we can “assume that all settler migration is...
1. What is the name of the article and what are its coordinates? Aníbal Pérez-Liñán and Angie García Atehortúa. 2024. “Oversight Hearings, Stakeholder Engagement, and Compliance in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” International Organization. 2. What’s the argument? Compliance with...
Last year I was on a sabbatical in Edinburgh, and my family and I watched Eurovision for the first time. We loved the out-there electro-pop versions of local folk music, got bored by the slow ballads, and generally bought into the hype. This year, we were excited to discover it was streaming for...
Labour MP David Lammy has a new piece in Foreign Affairs called, “The Case for Progressive Realism.” Where his manifesto is punchiest is in its unsparing critiques of British foreign policy: the Conservative Party has, over 14 years…sank deeply into nostalgia and denial about the United Kingdom’s...
Even though the school year is ending, protests against Israel--most prominent on college campuses--will likely continue. Beginning at Columbia University, they gained attention and spread after a heavy-handed police response. Prompted by the Israeli attack on Gaza (retaliation for Hamas' attack...
Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.
This is the fifth in our series of remembrances on the late Susan Sell. There was a terrific gathering at ISA 2024 where friends and colleagues gathered to remember Susan's wit, her contributions to the discipline, and her career-long efforts to challenge orthodox thinking and staid hierarchies. I...
Professor Sebastian Kaempf of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast this week. Seb grew up in Germany, with the fall of the Berlin Wall happening when he was entering his teenage years. While it had a big impact on him, he distinctly remembers his parents’ emotional...