Sometime in my first year of blogging, I read on the Internets that President Mugabe's troops had burned a six-year-old alive in front of his parents. I was horrified, it was late, I was tired and already pissed off at something completely unrelated, and I foolishly fired off a blog post provocatively entitled "Why Not Assassinate Mugabe?" The point of the post, actually, was that there are a whole bunch of really good reasons why the anti-assassination norm exists and holds in such cases. But naturally no one paid any attention to that, and by the time I woke up I had been called out for...

I have decided, following the controversy surrounding my post on networking, to remove myself as one of the permanent contributors to the Duck of Minerva. Through poorly chosen and ill-considered language and images, I made light of women’s challenges both in their academic and in their daily lives, for which I am deeply sorry. I don’t want to get in the way of other people doing good work on important topics on the site. In the future, I will diligently and sincerely work towards educating myself on the unique experiences of women in academia and pass those lessons on to others. I will...

I am delighted to report that Steve Saideman, Robert Kelly and Megan MacKenzie will be joining the ranks of permanent Duck contributors as of today. This leaves room for new guest bloggers: Stacie Goddard, Johannes Urpelainen and Jillian Schwedler. Stacie Goddard joins us from Wellesley College where she teaches international conflict, specializing in diplomacy, security studies, weapons and war and network politics. She is the author of Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland. Stacie is also a member of the International Studies Association's...