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War Made States, and States Make Breakfast
Texas is really like that. College Station, Texas, February 2012. Some presidential libraries are in major metropolitan areas, like the Kennedy Library in Boston, the Ford Library in Ann Arbor, and the...
View ArticleLifeline
The terms of the Creative Commons license impel me to explain the banner image on this Web site in somewhat greater detail. Almost everyone agrees on the rules of the academic Web site. CVs should be...
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The Successes of the Failed State of Texas
Erik Loomis picks up on something hidden in plain sight: the terrible war record of the Republic of Texas. Loomis’s post quotes from a War is Boring post that asks how a country with as pitiful a war...
View ArticleMinding the Gaps
Oh no! Gaps have been identified, but they are no longer being filled! (Data, obviously, from Google’s N-Grams. Note that advisers and editors appear to have been better able to communicate that...
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The Credibility of the Dark Side
A recurring theme in international relations, and the social sciences more generally, concerns the importance of credibility. In situations as diverse as nuclear deterrence or hiring a babysitter,...
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Thinking about shooting an elephant
Don’t worry. Not you. Via Flickr user Brittany H. When I started doing international relations professionally, I subscribed to many beliefs I no longer hold. One such belief was the idea that states...
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Advice for Ph.D. Job-Seekers in Political Science
ABDs wait for interviews at APSA 2015. One surprise of having recently been hired as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst is that now I’m the guy that Ph.D. students...
View ArticleGet an International Relations Ph.D. in 5 Minutes
At Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt lists the five things a B.A. graduate in International Relations will actually remember five years after graduating. I think his list is (a) right and (b) horrifying...
View ArticleWomen Also Know Stuff…About Resource Politics
I’m leaving this post as a ‘live’ marker of citations as (1) a public good for other researchers on resource politics and (2) a private good for me. Many prominent researchers on the role of resources...
View ArticleQuantification
The response of the historical profession’s elite was rapid, but by no means single-minded. To the sometimes strident demands of the devotees of the new history that traditionally trained historians...
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Is democracy bunk?
A great democratic realist. Photo by Flickr User chadh. Attention conservation notice: Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have written a very good book that deserves a wide audience. Their critique of...
View ArticleRe-post: Thoughts on Teaching Intro to International Relations
I’m re-posting a short essay I wrote in 2013 on my experiences teaching introduction to IR as a graduate student/ABD at Georgetown. My thoughts on these matters have changed a little bit, but I wanted...
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Writing a New Class on the End of the World
Coming to a classroom near you, Fall 2016. I’m writing a new class about an enduring topic: the end of the world. Here’s the draft syllabus. This first iteration of the course will be an...
View ArticlePop culture and International Relations: Stop geeking out
Attention conservation notice: Semi-structured thoughts on an emerging genre of IR/political science studies. Disclaimer: I reserve the right to distance myself from any and all ideas in this essay....
View ArticleIndulging Predators or Divorcing Research from Researchers
(What follows is speculative, and I reserve the right to retract it if I’m, well, wrong.) One of the many ways in which institutions have been shown to have abused the trust placed in them concerns the...
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Phoenix, Arizona: A Quasi-Conspiracy Theory About Names
Like many people on the Internet, I enjoy selected conspiracy theories (for the record, my favorite remains the ones concerning Denver Airport). Read what follows in that spirit–except that I’m also...
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Analyzing the End of the World
Hieronymus Bosch, via the excellent Tumblr “What the End of the World Looked Like” (here) A message to participants in my class on The Politics of the End of the World. How should we understand the...
View ArticleNotes for Undergraduate Success
Some notes prepared for an undergraduate group-mentoring session. There’s no great mystery to college success. All–or almost all–professors want you to succeed. All–or almost all–students want you to...
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Messy history: David Coleman’s The Fourteenth Day
Freedom, Donald Rumsfeld memorably pronounced, is messy. So too is history, although not the way political scientists do it. For political scientists and international-relations folks, especially in...
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Talking Points for Panel on Trump and Foreign Policy
Donald Trump Signs the Pledge by Flickr User Michael Vadon, September 3, 2015 What can we expect from the Trump administration in its foreign policy? It is difficult to tell. The Trump campaign is...
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