RelationsInternational

5 Jun 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
1 Comment

The Unwritten Rules of IR

The other day, Brandon Valeriano pointed out to me an ESPN article on the unwritten rules of baseball. Though I am a lifelong football and basketball fan, I’ve never been a huge fan of baseball. Several times over the course of my life, I’ve found myself at baseball games, however – including one that was apparently a pretty special game. Each time I’ve been at a baseball game, though, I’ve found myself having a lot of questions. While the rules of the game seem pretty simple on face, it seemed like there was always something going on that I didn’t understand. From keeping track of statistics I didn’t even know existed to what seemed to be a complex formula for when it is okay to throw a ball at a person going 100mph, I always felt like there was something going over my head. Something real baseball fans knew. This is what Tim Kurkjian is writing about – the shorthand to what all the guys on the field know, and I don’t.

Certainly, no one in IR is throwing anything at your ribs at 90 mph. Or, at least, I hope not. But there are still a number of unwritten rules of the discipline punishable by exclusion, gossip, and lost opportunity, and I want to talk about a few of them:

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5 Jun 2014
by Brandon Valeriano
1 Comment

The Six Productivity Habits of Unproductive Hack Gurus

I guess most would admit I am productive. I would not claim I am very successful, but at least the output part of my work world is covered. What really amuses me is the huge self help industry that seems to have little grasp on what helps people succeed or be productive. To me, the simplest advice for being productive is setting out a few goals in the morning and working till you make some sort of progress, no matter how small, towards those goals.

This article in the Business Insider, posted to the Glasgow graduate student network, amused me to no end. Of their six points, I absolutely reject every one of them and do the opposite. The points remind me of the various gurus who run around telling everyone productive people get up at 4am and that is good for you. For some reason this is a “productivity hack“, I will leave them the dawn while I wake up like a normal person when my internal clock tells me to.

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4 Jun 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments

Joining the Dark Side, Part 3: Starting Down the Path

In my last two posts (here and here) on moving into administration I have discussed the question of why – what motivates people to move into administration, and what costs or consequences they face in doing so. I hope these pieces help folks think about whether a move towards administration might be for them, whether now or in the future.

Now I want to turn to a more practical question: how? Assuming you’ve decided that you would like to move into a position in academic administration, how do you get there from here? I’m assuming for the sake of this discussion that “here” is a standard, garden-variety faculty position – tenured or tenure-track, with whatever load of teaching, research & service is typical for your institution.

I use this as my starting point because, well, that’s where I started. It’s not absolutely necessary – I know some excellent academic administrators who have taken other paths. But the vast majority of department chairs, program directors, assistant/associate/etc. deans and the like started life as tenure-track faculty. I think there’s merit to that system, on the whole. Continue Reading →

29 May 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
3 Comments

Commodify Women Much? Care.org and Tapping Women

Care.org poster

Before 6am this morning, I was wandering (read: running) through Orlando Airport to catch my flight to WIIS-Canada when I stopped (read: slowed down a little, I mean, I was really late) to read a billboard ad that called women “the world’s largest untapped resource.” I didn’t get a picture, or figure out who made the billboard at the time (read: real late), but I’ve been stewing about it all day, so I figured I would stew a little on RelationsInternational.

It was about six hours before I was able to research this and see where if came from: CARE.org. More on that soon. While I assumed it was well-intended, it still made me very angry: was I a keg in need of tapping? Or perhaps an oil reserve? Who has the right to decide to ‘tap’ me? Where is my agency? Isn’t there a contradiction between declaring oneself ‘powerful’ and calling, in passive voice, the same person an ‘untapped resource?’ This picture isn’t the poster that I saw, but it is similar – and, though I knew it was probably well-intended, I walked around most of the day feeling like, in addition to being an on-face ridiculous characterization, there is something violating about this ad campaign. Things just got more complicated when I saw where it came from. CARE is a leading humanitarian organization with an impressive record overall, little negative press, and some decent gender analysis on their website. So, here’s the summary: the characterization is inaccurate; I feel guilty for being mad; and I’m (still) fighting mad. I’ll explain all three …

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29 May 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
0 comments

The King’s Forever Coup

This is a post by Denise Horn, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Simmons College.

Thailand’s latest coup is no surprise; the Southeast Asian country has experienced twelve of them since the establishment of the modern state in 1932. What makes Thai coups so interesting, however, is not the relative lack of bloodshed that has accompanied the most recent spate, but the way in which those coups are promoted as preserving Thai “democracy”—and serve to maintain the most undemocratic of systems, the monarchy. The stability of Thailand matters in Southeast Asia—and to the interests of China and the US. Should Thailand dissolve into a civil war—and should the revered King Bhumibol die in the near future—the US’s “pivot to Asia” will take on a much different tone as it deals with the breakdown of one of its longstanding allies.

Thai democracy presents an interesting paradox: a “democratic” state with a “vibrant” civil society that presents very little challenge to a state controlled and maintained by royal myths, repressive laws, brutal prison systems, carefully crafted social norms and compliant populations. Opposition does exist, as Thailand’s history of coups and protest reveals, but opposition is always couched in terms of preserving or protecting the sanctity of Thai identity and more often represents clashes between warring elites. At the same time, civil society, rather than being a site of true pluralism, has been limited to playing a social service role, far from the ideal of democracy. While the factions involved in Thailand’s recent political upheavals could be construed as civil society in motion, in fact, Thailand’s civil society has been stunted by the government’s longstanding policy of paternalism, monarchism and state control. When the situation comes to a boil, then, it will be a war of elites, with the rest stuck in the middle—which will also quickly dissolve.

What has been holding this middle together has been King Bhumibol. Technically a figurehead, King Bhumibol is granted much reverence by his people, and there is a very real assertion of political power by the monarchy through a variety of mechanisms—that Bhumibol recently expressed his support for the military leaders of the coup reveals the extent to which his support matters—and the superficiality of Thai democracy.

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27 May 2014
by Barak Mendelsohn
0 comments

The War of Words between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Part 3

This is the third and last post on the recent exchange between al-Qaeda and the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The first part introduced al-Qaeda’s arguments against ISIL, and the second deals with ISIL’s attempt to tell a different construction of its past relations with al-Qaeda so that its current actions could not be construed as an act of rebellion against jihadi superior. This post presents ISIL’s effort to shift the blame for the infighting to al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN). Beyond the fascinating story of how jihadi fight and what set of principles and justifications they use in the public side of their fight, the conflict I discuss here as important because it underscores the divisions within the jihadi camp. It is easy to classify all jihadis together as comprising one entity. Easy but wrong, and likely to result in a sub-optimal response to the jihadi threat. Good counter-jihadism requires understanding of nuances and that would never come without comprehending diversity and internal conflict within the jihadi camp. So, back to ISIL …

Given how powerful the symbol of unity is, both with regard to the Muslim ummah and more specifically within the ranks of the mijahideen, ISIL portrayed the Islamic State as the embodiment of unity. In fact, it claimed that for the sake of maintaining unity it had been patient and endured considerable costs as rival Islamist groups continuously tried drawing it into conflict (no real appreciation of course to ISIL’s own role in generating the backlash from other Islamist groups). But according to ISIL the magnitude of the change al-Qaeda experienced required that it think beyond the important value of unity. It maintained that the escalation of the conflict resulted from to the deviation of al Qaeda’s General Command from the correct path. Framing al-Qaeda as the one who transgressed again the State, rather the other way around, is central to the rhetorical strategy of ISIL. It declares that while it remained loyal to the Islamically-sanctioned path, al-Qaeda overreached. Put this way, ISIL can attribute the infighting within the jihadi camp to the actions of its rivals and clear itself from any wrongdoing. Framing itself as the just player and others as responsible to the rift shapes ISIL’s suggested, and essentially the only legitimate solution: since al-Zawahiri is responsible for the bloodshed, it is in his power to stop it by changing his ways. Specifically, ISIL demands that he would annul the acceptance of JN’s pledge of allegiance and renounce al-Qaeda’s authority within the Syrian arena.

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27 May 2014
by Brandon Valeriano
1 Comment

Dealing with Rejection in Academia

Lets talk about rejection and the head spinning process of feedback in academia. Adding blogging to the Professor’s arsenal of communication has been enlightening in that we now seem to have a venue to talk about many topics that were taboo before. We did talk about these things, but among ourselves, at bars, late at night. Now people have gone very public about such topics as tenure denials, quitting, the importance of diversity, work-life balance, gender issues, and perhaps most importantly of all, depression.

There are many things about our jobs as researchers that are wonderful – the flexibility in hours, the intellectual fulfillment, doing something you love – but there are also things that can be an incredible drain on our spirit. The ups and downs combined with the delay of positive feedback versus the immediacy of rejection can be more than many of us are prepared to deal with. My focus today will be on rejection and the constant alternation between highs and lows in academia.

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26 May 2014
by R. William Ayres
1 Comment

Deterrence & the Inigo Montoya Problem: I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Inigo Montoya famously said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Journalists seem especially prone to the Inigo Montoya problem, especially when it comes to basic ideas in international relations.

David Sanger had an article in yesterday’s Sunday NYT op-ed section titled “Deterrence Revisited“. In it he argues (borrowing from a White House official) that President Obama is trying to find “a middle ground between the isolation strain that has emerged and the overextension of the past decade”. This has become a common, well-worn trope: present two “extreme” points of view (“isolationism” poorly-defined on the one hand and whatever it was that George W. did on the other) and then present something vaguely in the middle as the “reasonable” center. Nixon’s aphorism that we’re all Keynesians may or may not be true, but we sure are all Hegelians. Continue Reading →

24 May 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
0 comments

The Hard Way #7: It takes a village for academic publishing

If someone had told me that graduate school was the only time it would ever be someone’s job to read your work and provide advice on it, I would have spent a significantly longer amount of time in graduate school, and been much more grateful for my advisors there at the time. Given that, once you get a PhD (and even, for some of us who are less lucky, in graduate school), no one has a structured and remunerated support system for research and publishing, the business of creating a peer network is an important one.

The RelationsInternational dolls-holding-hands is partly to think about global politics relationally, but partly to think about the profession relationally. This is not my first post on networking and community, and it won’t be my last – but I thought it was important to talk about how it takes a village to publish, particularly in the context of the ongoing conversation about how to publish journal articles.

When I say ‘it takes a village’ – I mean that in a couple of traditional ways – that there is a significant amount of value to co-authorship, and to getting advice from one’s advisors, for example. A future post will be about co-authorship, and I will also address advisor-student co-writing. This post is more to address the non-traditional ways that I think developing ‘villages’ of peer networks can help with publishing, both early in your career and in a lot of ways continuing throughout it.

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23 May 2014
by Brandon Valeriano
1 Comment

The Missing Latinos on the US World Cup 2014 Team

There have been many complaints about the United States Men’s National Team selected for the upcoming Brazil World Cup. Foremost among them would be Landon Donovan’s exclusion from the team, but my concern goes much deeper. Where are all the Latinos?

Representing Latinos on the US Team, we have Alejandro Bedoya, Nick Rimando, and Omar Gonzales. That is 7.6 percent of the US Team while Latinos make up 17 percent of the entire US society, a number itself underrepresented due to the undocumented. Historically we see a pattern in that these numbers have not changed through time, despite supposed intervention by National team authorities. In 2006 there were three Latinos on the team and in 2010, there were four. Back in 1994, when the World Cup was held in the United States, there were five Latinos on the US team, a clear regression.

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