Christopher Clary is an assistant professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York and a non-resident fellow with the Stimson Center’s South Asia program. His research focuses on the sources of cooperation in interstate rivalries, the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation, U.S. defense policy, and the politics of South Asia. Previously, Clary was a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute...
In 2018 and 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX planes crashed, killing 346 people hailing from 36 different countries across the globe. Now, some of the families who lost loved ones are challenging in U.S. federal court the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) settlement with Boeing. No matter what the court decides, the families have already raised important questions not only about the Boeing settlement, but also how corporations are held accountable for...
Elizabeth Acorn is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research examines international relations, international law, anti-corruption, and the governance of global markets. Elizabeth holds a PhD in Political Science from Cornell University and a JD from the University of Toronto.
Jessi A. J. Gilchrist is a graduate student at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto where her current project focuses on the international-imperial intersections of peacebuilding during the interwar years. Her research is widely interested in tracing global inequities that have emerged from imperial power dynamics and the role that international law has played in upholding these systems. Her work...
Professor Alexander Barder joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Barder was born in Paris, France, but he and his family moved to Miami very shortly thereafter. He traveled back to France often to visit family, and mainly spoke French until going to a bilingual school. His discussions with his grandpa about World War II sparked an interest in history, which, along with math, were his favorite subjects in school. Alex went to boarding school in...
The global distribution of material power changes from time to time. It’s something that happens, not something we should spend any amount of time pursuing or avoiding. I say this as someone who thinks the United States has done questionable good and much unquestionable harm with its former status as a unipolar power, so this is not a proxy argument about US foreign policy. You might be wondering who wants...
Scholars of international relations don’t agree on much, but they at least agree that anarchy (th…
Professor Patricia Owens joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Owens grew up in London, with Irish parents who'd emigrated from Ireland during the Troubles, and the conflict in Northern Ireland provided a background to her life and especially growing up. Patricia went to a Catholic school in South London until 16, and her Catholicism was less a 'religious' factor than it was a cultural and political identity that shaped her time growing...
I recently posted a piece at Lawyers, Guns and Money about Jonathan Swan’s two-part series on Trumpworld’s plans for a second term. The gist is that Trump and his inner circle intend to revive his Schedule F executive order. What is Schedule F? Eric Katz explains: In October 2020, just before the presidential election, Trump signed his controversial executive order creating a new class of federal employees excepted...
If you’ve spent any amount of time in Washington, there’s a good chance you’ve internalized a rosier narrative of the Cold War than the actual history warrants (I certainly had). To correct that, I have an essay out in Foreign Affairs with Michael Brenes, arguing that the bipartisan cheerleading for great-power rivalry today is based on a jaundiced reading of Cold War history. The popular image of the Cold War—as...
It turns out that it’s hard to write a roundup of happenings at the Duck of Minerva when there aren’t many to speak of. Much of that’s on me. What’s my excuse? Well, the kid finally contracted COVID. The rest of my family succumbed in short order. So that was fun. On the upside, none of us get seriously ill. On the downside, we got to experience post-COVID fatigue, with a helping of mental fog on the side. We recovered just in time to take our...
Like a lot of academics, I love Google n-grams, but not as much as the digitized archive Google uses to produce it. It’s a great warren of rabbit holes – even better than wikipedia – and I often wind up following one somewhere or other. My latest journey begins with realism. Steven Walt’s recent Foreign Policy entry (“Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?”) touched off a round of online debate, including entries by Seva Gunitsky, Paul...