Despite, Thanksgiving

This may be the hardest year to give thanks.  Not only because a convicted felon was elected President, but because I lost my mother this year, my wife has been dealing with her mother declining, and my daughter's production company closed its doors.  It has been a hard year in many ways, but the only way to get through this madness and the sadness is to hold onto the good stuff.  And there was good stuff this year despite all the bad stuff.

 

 

The year started with two amazing trips back to back.  I got to ski Hokkaido with my sister, her boyfriend, and his kids, and then I got to join my brother in a couple of the most magical places with my cousin, his wife, and his kids joining us in the second place for two days of great rides.  I am very thankful both my sister and brother as well as my cousin for enticing me into such fun trips.  

I am very grateful to the two H's that dominated my winter: Humboldt and Hertie. The former funded my time in Germany for three months in 2024 and three more in 2025, and the latter was a terrific host last winter and again next winter.  It was a great environment to get a sense of what Europeans were thinking, to get feedback on my work, and to do research in both Berlin and Helsinki.  Oh, and being based in berlin for three months gave me opportunities to do some more travel--Vienna for a talk, parts of Germany for Hertie events, southern Germany and Italy with Mrs. Spew, and some Austrian Alp skiing.

 

I am very grateful for a very supportive family.  We got together twice in the aftermath of my mother's passing--a short shiva in NYC and the first wedding of the next generation.  Much solace to grieve in company and then to celebrate some love.  Oh, and the wedding had llamas!

I am thankful for the summer providing some quick distractions from the sadness: a CDSN edited volume workshop (on which I am quite behind in editing), a great ERGOMAS conference in Stockholm, and then a few days at the NATO summit in DC with my favorite NATO expert and former podcast co-host.  

I was quite glad to see family again in late summer in western Canada as the summer family vacation was reset to Vancouver and Victoria.  I had been to the former a few times, but my first Victoria trip plus heaps of time with my two sisters, my brother, and a couple of nieces. 

The fall brought a heap of CDSN fun.  I am so grateful for the great team that does all of the heavy-lifting especially Melissa and Sherry.  We did a heap of great stuff--the Summer Institute, the book workshop, helping IUS-C, all of the podcasts, and it only works with so many people sharing their expertise and enthusiasm.  And I have had to ask a lot more from everyone as we start the process of seeking funding for another 3 or 7 years.  The grants require a lot of teamwork and a lot of time from many people, and I am so very thankful to have such great partners in this endeavor.

Oh and the fall brought back the 1980s!  First my 40th high school reunion and then Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!  

My family has faced much stress this year, so I am most thankful for their resilience.  The only way out is through, and we know that some parts are going to get harder.  Other parts hopefully will be less stressful and more fun.  We are now planning ski trips and another Eurotrip for Mrs. Spew.  

Oh, and we can bake our way through it, of course. My sister made 7 pies for today, while I am 60% of the way through my cookiefest.  I hope you and yours are having a great Thanksgiving.

Reuniting? When does it feel so good?*

Pretty good crowd for a Saturday night
(not my first Billy Joel reference of the weekend)

 This weekend, I went to my 40th high school reunion, which means, yes, I am old.  I am glad I went despite the flood of campaign ads and signs in the very pivotal state that is Penis-sylvania (hey, I can't help myself thanks to Arnold Palmer and Trump's fixation).  As someone who didn't really enjoy high school that much and is not that close to those I went to school with, why did I go?  

 

 

 

 

That impending mortality is part of it.  I have lost several friends the past few years--poli sci folks, mostly--and so I wanted to make sure I got to see folks who did make a difference in my life long ago.  Sure, high school is 40 years ago, but those four years and the six before them (I lived in that school district from 3rd grade onwards) definitely shaped who I am, and I have a far sharper memory of those years than others.  Oh, and there is my FOMO.  I didn't want to miss out on whatever I might miss out on.  My FOMO was very intense in high school as I felt was in the group of kids who didn't belong to any group, but I am sure folks looked at my group and saw us having group-ness.  I was definitely not part of the party scene (well, after my brother stopped having pretty big bashes at our house when I was 12 and 13--my first bartending experience was at one of his parties).  

I also went back because it will be the last time I am in that area for the foreseeable future.  I was visiting Philly twice a year for the past several years as my mother could no longer travel--Thanksgiving and the summer family trip were always in Philly.  So, I embraced the last chance to see the place for some time and to see some of the people I occasionally saw when I was in town.  I also had to pick up some stuff I inherited from my mother--some art, a classic chair/ottoman, some kitchen stuff.  Oh, and I got to eat a steak sandwich with my sister at a formerly dead ss shop--Jim's!   I not only drove past all three of my old schools (see below), but also my old home.  Yep, I swam deep in nostalgia.

Our reunion was in the same part of a restaurant/conference center as another school having its 50th.  So, when I first got there, I thought my schoolmates had aged faster than I expected.  I guess those next ten years are going to hit us hard.  I could recognize most folks, even those I never really hung out with.  I had a harder time recognizing the men than the women, perhaps because the men shared the same dynamics--getting heavier, losing their hair, going gray, where as the women tended to look mostly the same.  I had gone to the 25th reunion and many folks are semi-active on facebook, so the time distance was not much as it might have been.  

 

Upon hearing that I live in Canada, folks thought I might have made the longest trip.  No, I was the most foreign, but there were a couple of Californians.  I was the only professor in the crowd, which will always strike folks as amusing and ironic--that I liked to talk a lot then (and now) but that I was pretty lazy about my school work.  One person did remember that I tended to challenge the teachers, perhaps overthinking stuff. I only one one strange question about Canada--Justin Trudeau's parentage...  I had to explain the academic job market to many folks--that my winding path was not the product of any plan--I am glad how things worked out, and I am very happy where I am at.

I definitely talked to a significant number of folks last night that I hardly ever interacted with. I did shake hands with one guy who bullied me back in the day.  We didn't have much to say to each other, but he was in a group of people I was chatting with.  The guy who I got into a fight somewhere around 10th or 11th grade wasn't there as he was one of those who had passed--you can't see his picture here as it is behind those in front.  Cheryl, who was in the front here, was someone I knew decently, as she had a great sense of humor and we busted each other up from time to time.  Steve, on the left side, had one of the biggest personalities in the school.  Bruce and Jeff were guys I knew but not very well.  Buddy, who is behind Jeff on this table was a guy I was friends with in middle school, but didn't have any classes with in high school, again, if I remember correctly.  Jennifer died when we were in middle school--we had some classes together, but she was mostly a friend of some of my friends.  That display hit pretty hard.

I appeared on this display in my fave
Mr. Bill T-shirt.  Yep, we provided
our own costumes for that play.

This one display had some theater stuff that was fun to see, as I didn't do much extracurricular stuff and didn't hang out with the yearbook crew, so there aren't that many shots of me.  But I did do a one act play, Sittin, where I played a kid who sat in a tree all summer to impress a girl.  I was typecast, of course, because the story of my high school years was desperation and failure when it came to dating. Which reminds me, I forgot to ask a classmate about his sister, the one person I dated for several weeks back in 11th grade.  I had sworn that given how hard it was to ask people out that if any girl asked me out, I would say yes.  And I was glad to do so as we had fun for awhile.  

One of the big surprises was that more than a few of my classmates, including those I hardly ever talked to reported that they read my stuff here, which surprised me.  No, I am not surprised that my dad literally printed out every page of my blog (and of my rate my prof page), but I never really thought that those folks way back would be following me here.  It was really quite touching to hear that.  And, of course, now I am really self-conscious as I write these words.

 The only regret I had was that one of our teachers showed up--a guy who barely let me into his AP English class and only after writing an essay on Ethan Frome right before junior year (I still hate that book).  Yes, I did summer homework to get into that class.  I was glad I did, as I did learn a lot from him, and the other folks in the class were the sharpest kids in school, so I learned a lot from them and had fun.  And we did it all again the next year in a class called Humanities, for those who took AP English in 11th grade.  I did want to report to him that the guy who barely made it into his class and was a solid B/B+ student has managed to make writing a large part of his career--five books (the latest one is all but processed and published) and counting plus writing here as well.  That and I wanted to say hi to his wife who was, um, much younger--someone who had been to least a few of my brother's parties.  I was glad to have said hi to my fave history teacher at my 25th--he passed shortly afterwards, so I was glad to have thanked him for his enthusiasm and support for my interest in international relations. 

It was just a very sweet evening even though I didn't bring any cookies.  There was no ice cream, bice cream or otherwise.  [The cake was ok, I didn't try the cookies]. I was most amused that one classmate joked about being annoyed at all of my bice cream pics--that it encouraged bad habits.  Wait until she sees the months long baking for this year's cookie-fest.  Despite the AC varying in intensity, it was a night full of warmth and good feelings.  I am already looking forward to ten years from now.

 

 

 

It was simply LM Middle School back in my day.

Red Lion, now a library, and formerly a very,
very old school for 3rd and 4th grade. 
Tis where I started at Lower Moreland.
The heaters in it made me sick on a regular
basis.

 

 

 

Ye olde LM High School. 

 

* I once titled a paper on irredentism after this song.  Alas, editors hate fun titles.

Giving Thanks, 2018

An annual Semi-Spew tradition is to give thanks, enumerating and appreciating all those people, institutions, events and whatever for which I am so very grateful.  I whine a lot, but I know that I am very lucky to have such great friends, family, acquaintances, students, etc.   While I appreciate it all the time, on this day (and on the Canadian day as well), I stop and look around and give thanks.

I started a little early this year as there was a meme going around twitter:

I owe so much to some strong women along the way: @CherieMaestas at TTU, @excubs at McGill--both were great pals, amazing institution builders, voices of reason, and funny as hell. #AcademicThankfulness

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 20, 2018

You can hit that tweet to follow the thread.  I kind of bounced around.  Here, I will try to put my thanks to into chronological order so that I forget fewer people.

• I am very thankful that my daughter's adventure going out to California and settling there (at least for now) has worked out so well.  The only casualty was my ankle just before we started on our journey.  But the ride was fun as we got to see a hunk of the US including Winslow, Arizona and the Grand Canyon.  She moved from Intern Spew to Graduate Spew and Executive Assistant Spew.  She is meeting famous and not so famous actors during her work, learning the biz, and enjoying the hell out of LA.  I am so very thankful that she is thriving, largely on her own, and in a place that allows us to go to HarryPotterLand (the smaller version).
• There were lots of interesting events and meetings in Ottawa from last winter through to last week, so I will reiterate how thankful I am that the randomizer career engine that is the academic job market washed me up on the shores of Ottawa (yeah, I mix my metaphors--it is my blog and I can do what I want).  Ottawa has been so very good to me.  I keep saying because it keeps being true that being in a national capital is great for a curious International Relations scholar.  I meet interesting people, I get to go to embassies to connect before I go do research, the IR community is very terrific, and the folks in and near government continue to talk to me even after I write critical stuff.
  
• Speaking of travel, I am grateful to Canada's grant agency, SSHRC, as well as the Paterson Chair funds, for making my research and conference travel possible.  I learned a great deal in Seoul and Santiago, ate great food, had very productive interviews, and even got to ski the Andes.

• I am so very grateful that I can continue to play ultimate well into my 50's.  I recovered from my sprained ankle and had a good summer of ultimate interrupted not by injury but by the research travel.  I am now playing in a winter grandmasters league (indoors, of course), and having a great time, still laying out after all these years.
  
  
• My father died this year, which was, of course, very sad.  But it brought the family together--both before and after.  We are closer now, especially my siblings, than anytime I can remember, so I am grateful that we got through all of it as well as we did.  Plus we were and continue to be entertained with all the stuff my father saved over the years (everything!).  I have been lucky that I have lost so few people in my life.  My father managed not just to live to nearly 91, but had multiple chances to say goodbye.  I am thankful that he had the chance to go out on his terms.  And that is obsessive hoarding led to all kinds of interesting discoveries.
• I am thankful I had the chance to go to another NATO side party--an experts forum next to the big summit.  The Canadian Ambassador to NATO, Kerry Buck, made that happen for me, and then Stefanie Von Hlatky got to be my NATO wingperson again (and I was hers).  Thanks to both of them!

  

  I am just above the moderator's notes

• Most of the rest of the summer and fall were dedicated to the CDSN application.  Building a network and seeking funding is a whole lot of work, which, yes, led to some griping.  But it was actually a pleasure because I got to work with such great people at Carleton, all over Canada, and beyond.  Seeking funding has meant doing a heap of networking, and I have met very interesting people, and I have relied heavily on great people to keep pushing this thing forward.  The co-directors--Andrea Charron, JC Boucher, David Bercuson, Phil Lagasse, once again SVH, Irina Goldenberg, Al Okros, Anessa Kimball, Alex Moens, Srdjan Vucetic, Stephane Roussel--provided great ideas and did a heap of writing and revising.  The various partners and participants had to yet again go through the SSHRC website maze.  Jeff Rice, Alvine Nintai, Kyla Reid,  and Kate Swan were so very helpful at Carleton, and I greatly appreciate the support of my Director, my Dean, and the VP for research.  I am also very grateful for the folks in the Canadian Armed Forces who are so willing to engage us as we work on this network.
• I am very grateful to the faculty and students at NPSIA.  While I have had moments and even years of professional happiness elsewhere, I have been most supported and recognized here at NPSIA.  My colleagues have supported my efforts, including our Defence brownbags, and our students keep pushing me to think about my assumptions.  When a friend asked about dream jobs, I had a hard time coming up with ones that didn't involve beaches or skiing as I am very happy these days.  
• As I hinted at the top, I am very thankful for heaps of folks on twitter and other social media.  I suffered from a bad case of FOMO (fear of missing out) throughout much of my life. While twitter, facebook and the rest have flaws (subverting democracy, facilitating repression, etc), they have been mighty good to me.  I have met interesting people, connected with old friends, developed connections that have been useful for my research and teaching.  I belong to a Slack that is full of national security snark and insight and support. Podcasts have gotten me through short and line drives, including one,  Binge-Mode, that is causing me to look back and seeing stuff in the Harry Potter books and movies that I didn't see before.
• Finally, I am grateful that my friends have managed this year of strife and crisis intact. Exemplar below:
  
  

  

  Saw Grant, an old TTU friend, in an aiport
  as he was getting trained for his A-stan
  deployment as a reservist.  Glad he made
  it back ok at the end of the year.

  I hope you and yours have much to be thankful for and that your Thanksgiving is full of stuffing, pie, sweet potatoes, and pie.

2017: The Longest Year of Our Lives

Time for another year in review post--the Spew of 2017.  I blogged less this year, averaging 2/3s of a post a day, which is continues a decline.  Why?  Partly because I express much of my anger on twitter these days, partly because what I want to say I have said before, whether it is about #voterfraudfraud, the tyranny of low expectations, or the politics of academic departments, so I re-post, rather than re-write. 

Anyhow, even though I wrote less, the year felt incredibly long as living in Trump world means responding not to a crisis every few weeks but one every few hours, and that is exhausting.  Which is probably the best explantion for less blogging--it has been a very emotionally exhausting year.  Predictions ahead by folks seem to suggest it will get worse as we get the real Trump.... or nuclear war.

Anyhow, looking back, it was a great year for me despite what was going on elsewhere with record travel, meaning great food, really interesting stuff learned along the way, and, yes, selfies in new places.  I do these yearly summaries because they help to remind me what happened and they also serve as handy places to find key posts.  I hope you enjoy the bath in my nostalgia.

January

Japan a second time was just as lovely as the first. Ok, it was the third trip but the second research trip, which included travel to the other side of the island (took less time via bullet train than travel across Lost's island the first season but not the sixth) for a conference and more snow than I have ever seen.

2016 was a lousy year for predictions.  2017 was much better despite a vow not to make them (pie crust promises are a long tradition here at the Semi-Spew).  Perhaps the best one was when I referred to Trump's cabinet and other advisers as Arsonists.  That and my response to a question in Japan about the future of the Trump administration--nope, impeachment is not going to happen.

February

I was accused of being hysterical about Trump.  I guess if one considers the % of posts about the President, maybe.  But I think 2017 shows that I was right to be very, very concerned.  On the positive side, it was nice to see a man being accused of this largely gender-biased term.

Trump's continued and seemingly deliberate ignorance at NATO gave me much fodder for the year, correcting the dumb yet unkillable myths about the alliance and 2%.

I had a book workshop in Irvine that I turned into Anniversary Fest.  We were married 25 years ago in San Diego, so we returned to the scene of .... where it was supposed to happen.  We got rained out and forced inside.  And the amazing thing... I didn't blog about it.  Turns out Mrs. Spew can be super distracting ;)






My favorite idea of 2017--fighting #voterfraudfraud by getting Dems and others to get folks id's.  Voterfraudfraud needs to be fought in every way possible--in the courts, in the statehouses and in the streets. While we should fight efforts to require folks to get voter id's (always aimed at the real threat of folks voting for Democrats despite the claim that these are to fight the imaginary threat of voter fraud), getting people gun permits, drivers' licences, whatever is another way to fight.  Increasing the franchise and fighting voter suppression is a multidimensional effort.


Twas an early and very good International Studies Association meeting.  I got a Duckie for special achievement, I got to visit a really cool pop culture museum across the street from the hotel, I met up with my best friend from summer camp who I had not seen since College Spew was a toddler, and there were protests against the Muslim ban, which, alas, kept one of my students away despite her receiving an award.

March

I do much academic engagement from home--skyping to tv stations around Canada, so I felt Robert Kelly's pain. I know him as he was a Duckster for a while.  So, this resonated in multiple ways.

I got to go to India for a few talks and roundtables in Mumbai.  It was great to get perspectives from a very different part of the world and to see such an amazing city of contrasts.

One of the recurring themes on twitter in 2017 was how brutal the academic environment can be, so I jumped on the theme of academic kindness when it came up.  It helped me remember how many folks were so very good to me over the years that helped me get to where I am and to make the journey a mostly fun, engaging, and positive one.

April


A friend of mine started a great podcast on US National Security--Bombshell. I have been thinking of starting one, and now have much to learn from this one.

Will Moore shook the discipline, especially those who study repression and internal conflict, when he killed himself.  The irony of this act is that he felt alone in many ways despite creating an amazing community of scholars who loved him and each other.  They provided much solace for each other in the aftermath.  I am still angry and sad and frustrated, but I know I am in good company. 

I started referring to Trump as an uncertainty engine, but needed to plant my flag on it, so here's the definitive post where I explain how Trump generates uncertainty and why this is so bad.


May







While I have tenure at Carleton, my endowed chair is renewable. And, yes, I have been here long enough for it to be renewed.  Getting the notice allowed me to look back and be very thankful for everything the chair has done for me.

The Dave/Phil/Steve project took me to Brazil!  I spent two weeks in Brazil asking about their civ-mil relations and specifically the role of their legislature in overseeing their military.  I had so much help from a great team of Brazilian research assistants in Brasilia and Rio, and the Brazilians I met were very interesting and informative.  I did miss the political crisis in Brasilia by a few hours thankfully.  Rio was beautiful but wet.


I got plagiarized in a good way: a conversation with a producer in Hollywood led to some of my words making it into Brad Pitt's movie that tried to satire the US war in Afghanistan and Stan McCrystal's experience.

June

I finally got my hands on the long hidden Lessons Learned report by the Canadian government regarding the Afghanistan experience.  I was not impressed.  The good news is that Adapting in the Dust didn't get scooped.

Asia?  Again? Yep, after having spent only a week or so in Afghanistan in 2007, 2017 became the year of much Asia with another trip to Japan (instead of South Korea due to their impeachment getting in the way of interviews--which led me to ponder if I am the Impeachment Fairy)--a fourth time in the past year and half--and presenting in Hong Kong!

A regular theme here is griping about Canadian civil-military relations and the lame public debates we have here on the subject.  I had ample opportunity this year.

Five years in Ottawa! Wow!  I marked the anniversary via blogging about the many things I have enjoyed in the fast five. Oh and my sabbatical ended. Sob.

July

Canada turned 150 on the 1st.  Twas a big deal.   Did I list 150 reasons why I love Canada?  Um, close.

I had fun thinking about how the various players in the GOP would fit into the D&D world.  Yes, intelligence and wisdom are distinct attributes...

A key theme in 2017 and will be one in 2018: not any decent military options re North Korea.

August

I left PSR.

The Alaska trip went great--but getting to the port of origin (Seattle) was quite the learning experience.


US is not alone in having an ugly affair between white supremacist websites and right wing parties--Canada, too.


Another repeated theme this past year: let's not adore the military.  It is a bad look for a democracy and even worse for civilian control of the military.

September
APSA did doth rock with my cohort plus getting together.

Favorite documentary of the year?  Flatball.  Because it was about ultimate, duh.

The US won't protect Canada?  Please, let's not panic since Canada has never been protected by defenses against nuclear weapons, but rather US's commitment to respond to an attack on an ally.



Steve's world tour in 2017 continued with Latvia, as that is Canada's next NATO mission.  Tripwires can be fun!

October
Another recurring theme?  Mattis is overrated.

Shortest trip of the year was to see a former student, Aisha Ahmad, get the award she was supposed to have received at the ISA.  Super proud and impressed.

Sexual harassment was not just a Hollywood thing, but also a recurring theme at the Spew since universities tend to care about protecting themselves more than their students.


Secession is hip again, so my old work is relevant anew.  Actually, secession is not really more prevalent now than in the past, but let's not tell anyone that.

November

I thought about permission structures and cascades: that the Weinstein news changed who had permission to do what.  Now, at least temporarily, sexual harassers don't have permission to predate and survivors do have permission to come out and be believed.

The war on universities continues, so I ranted back at a journalist who was poo-pooing the grants we receive in the most annoying way possible.

December
A basic pet peeve for this dual citizen in Canada: when Canadians get US politics/history very wrong.


Trump as President has meant a lot of revisiting Intro to IR since the folks around him don't seem to understand the basics.  This lesson?  Pre-emption and preventive wars are two different things.


What magical creatures live in the academic universe?  A rare chance to be playful this year.


The year ended with my dad learning that he is dying, leading to the family seeing him and downloading his memories as much as possible.



In my scanning of the year, I see that I was focused on the same stuff over and over again.  I blame Trump since he had no learning curve.  But I will try to be more inspired next year by non-Trump stuff.  There will still be heaps of travel to new places although perhaps not as quite as much as in 2017.

May you and yours have a very happy and nuclear war-free 2018!

2017 Highlights: Positive Meme?

Last night, a guy I don't know started a twitter conversation aimed at creating some positivity, which has been in short supply this year:

quote this tweet with your top 3 personal accomplishments of 2017 (you decide what counts)

— Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) December 24, 2017

My first instinct was to focus on some of the sillier ones:
1) Having a tweet liked by Mark Hamill
2) Being followed on twitter by Henry "the Fonz" Wrinkler
3) Hitting the top category of frequent flier mileage.

But to be serious and to recognize that 2017 was a very cool year
1) Twas a record travel year going to several places I had never been before: Mumbai, Hong Kong, Riga, Rio and Brasilia, as well as some cities in Japan that I didn't visit the first time--Nagano and Niigata.
2) Published the first piece of the next big project.

3)  Managed not to lose my temper during the odyssey to Seattle, which had two tarmac stays of multiple hours, two missed connections, three hour wait for service, renting the wrong car in a city we had not planned to travel through, being wildly overcharged (as in 10x) for the aforementioned car.  The cruise at the end of this trip was fantastic, so it was all worth it. 

Given that I was on sabbatical for half the year, I can't really complain.  We had some great adventures.  There was one last car accident for one family member (my niece dodged a deer, two trees, but, alas, the road as well).  And, well, the end of the year is bringing the family together as mortality is about to visit.  So, much perspective right now about the good things to appreciate.  We have been so lucky for so long....

Anyhow, happy holidays to you and yours.  More year in review stuff once I get back home in a few days.

Ten Years and a Wakeup

Thanks to FB, I was reminded that this week was a big deal ten years ago for me.  I had one of the best job opportunities of my life and I blew it and then I flew off to Afghanistan. 

While I was not yet unhappy at my old place, the opportunity to be in the DC area--both to be close to family and to that center of the IR world--was pretty damn attractive.  Perhaps too much so as I choked during the job talk.  And it was one of those that is before lunch, so I spent lunch apologizing, knowing that I was a dead man walking for the rest of the afternoon.  It turned out ok, as five years later, I got a really cool job in a great city.  So, yeah, my career has gone the way I thought it would, but I am happy with how it has worked out.

One of the strange things about that job talk was I was thinking as much about the next opportunity as the one in front of me.  In the good old days, the Canadian Dept of National Defence would take random or not so random collections of academics to wherever the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed.  This time: Kabul and Kandahar.  The timing was great both for my research and for, well, our safety.  I had just started the NATO book research with Dave Auerswald, which was originally going to compare the NATO missions in Bosnia and Kosovo to the one in Afghanistan and to the unilateral mission in Iraq.  Instead, Afghanistan ate the book, as there was so much variation in the one case, and James Blunt helped to shift our focus.  December of 2007 was also a relatively safe time to do this kind of trip--at the time, Afghanistan seemed to be the war we could win, compared to the very, very violent Iraq war in mid-surge. 

I had never been to any part of Asia, and I had never been in a war zone.  Just the experience of getting one's flak jacket, helmet, etc in Dubai where Camp Mirage was (we were not supposed to identify where the Canadian base in the Mideast was although wikipedia knew it) was startling.  Flying in a C-130 was ... loud and uncomfortable, but not a bad way to start the transition to Afghanistan.  We landed in Kandahar and had to transfer to get to Kabul, displacing a group of advisers and Afghan officers--perhaps the first hint that the priorities might be a bit backwards. 

In Kabul, we were driven around in a two car convey, briefly daily on how to respond if we got attacked and told to look out for rubble alongside the roads, which might mask a roadside bomb.  Um, there is rubble all over the place.  Anyhow, we met with Afghan politicians, we were impressed by the Afghan Aussies who ran a media empire, we met with UN officials (the soon to be lamented Chris Alexander), we met with embassy folks, and we slept in NATO facilities with a doghouse with my name on it:

We then got flown back to Kandahar for several days of briefings, meetings and what passed for tourism.  We very much drank from the fire hose as we received a ton of info, even as we realized that we were actually a component of an information operation ... aimed at the Canadian public.  Not a great choice, I think, since we tend to be critical, but still we developed favorable views of the CAF and what it was doing.  Indeed, we even got to see the temporary detainment facility, which was presented pretty honestly--that the Canadians would hold onto prisoners if and when the Afghans treated them poorly.  Too bad the politicians back home couldn't grasp the realities of this.  We learned a lot from informal discussion as well.  We went to Canada house where the Canadian troops spent their off-hours (I finished second in a poker game!), and heard more critical takes on the mission there than in the official briefings.  We also went off and found the Canadian media tent even though we were supposed to avoid them.  Oops?  We even crossed the road to check out a boneyard--old Soviet tanks!

We were helicoptered (coo1!) to the Provincial Reconstruction Team, where we got to see the whole of government effort writ small-- the diplomats, the aid people, the police trainers and the soldiers.  They seemed quite cooperative, but, well, things were different back home. 

It was a pretty impressive trip, and helped me catch up quickly on the geography, the personalities, and the realities of Afghanistan.  "Wait, you are saying the half brother of the President runs this province and is the Al Capone of Kandahar?!"  It definitely made it easier to write the book.  And I got to spend a heap of time with some great Canadian scholars who are much of the backbone of the Canadian defence community (including a future colleague at NPSIA).  It almost made me forget how badly I bombed that job talk. 

Ted Robert Gurr, a Tall Man

Last night, on the way back from Thanksgiving with the family, I learned that Ted Robert Gurr died over the holiday.  I knew Ted since 1998, so I have some thoughts I want to share.  First, about the title, whenever I bumped into Ted, I was always struck by how tall he was--in height, in stature, and in the way he presented himself.  He just always stood out--because he was tall and so distinguished.  I never saw him, well, as shabby as I can be at times.  His work so very much stood out.  He has over 30,000 citations, which is what legends in the field of political science get to and few others.  His H-index is 67--which meant he averaged something like two articles a year that each got more than 67 citations.  This might not mean much to outsiders, but it is mighty impressive to political scientists.  For how he viewed himself and how he worked at his vocation, see this interview conducted by one of his most successful (and, alas, most troubled) students--Will Moore.

His book, Why Men Rebel, is simply one of those books that is required reading and shaped the field for decades.  The basic argument, if I recall correctly,* is that it is not absolute poverty that causes individuals (and, yes, mostly men although I don't remember gender being something he addressed in that book) but how people view themselves where they are versus where they feel they should be.  While it has  been attacked ever since, the idea helps to make sense of Trump voters today, why richer territories seek to secede, and so on.
*  I am not doing any re-reading of his work to write this as I am not nearly as good as Ted at managing my time.

His second major contribution, in my view, is that he created heaps of public goods--widely used datasets.  Polity, evaluating the world's countries on how democratic they are, was explicitly aimed to do exactly that and then became handy for democratic peace scholars and many others.  Minorities at Risk, which is where I come in, was actually not aimed to become a dataset for asking all kinds of questions about ethnic conflict.  It was designed to assess which minorities in the world were at risk of violence.  Yeah, it is in the title of the dataset, but the intent of the effort baked in a problem that eventually made it hard to use (until resurrected by Johanna Birnir and a bunch of other folks including me).  Anyhow, it was not really designed to be used by others, and one could tell since so many variables were coded as 0 meaning none, 1 meaning high, 2 meaning medium, and 3 meaning low.  Lots of re-coding had to be done.  Oy.

His second book using this, Peoples Versus States, and related pieces indicated that there is actually less ethnic violence now than earlier, which both runs against how we perceive the world (since the media covers ethnic violence, not ethnic peace) and showed that many countries had learned key lessons: that it may not be clear that giving folks more autonomy reduces violence, but taking it away (hey, Spain!!) is likely to cause it; that stable democracy (which Polity showed there is much more of) is better than the alternatives; that international management efforts might actually work.

Ted was definitely a gentleman and a scholar.  I got to know this personally (I have met other "gods" of poli sci, but he is the one I had the most interactions with).  I first interacted with Ted when I learned of MAR as I was trying to figure out how to test quantitatively the arguments in my dissertation.  He moved pretty quickly from being reluctant to share MAR to sending me copies of the raw coding sheets of the international support variables--how much assistance do groups receive from abroad and from whom.  I remember spending hours in my windowless office in Lubbock, taking those sheets and turning them into coded data.  It led to some of my first quantitative publications as well as the quant chapter of my first book.  At the same time, I examined MAR to see what it could tell me about separatism.  This led to a series of articles, but too late for a key opportunity.

I actually met Ted for the first time at a job interview at the University of Maryland in 1998.  This was one of the best job talks of my life, even though I didn't get the job.  How do I know?  It led to a fruitful partnership with Ted and the other MAR folks as well as an invitation to an edited volume project with another Maryland faculty member.  Anyhow, Ted had asked David Lake, who he thought was my adviser, to ask me to apply.  Which I did.  I ended up being fourth or fifth on the short list, and was brought in only after those folks didn't do well.  I did not rank highly on the original list in part because I had not done any quant work yet (it was all in process at the time) and I was pretty junior, and they wanted someone to eventually run MAR and essentially replace Ted.  Given how much I suck at coding data and managing graduate students to code data, they made the right decision.

My subsequent work using MAR data kept me connected to Ted.  When the dataset was attacked for its selection bias problem, I got invited to be on the newly created MAR advisory board and was named its convenor.  I still don't know what that role entails.  The board itself met once a year or so about ten years.  That board helped me connect to both senior scholars and to the next generation of Ted's students, and for that I will always be grateful.  I do remember being rude to Ted at the end of one of these because I had just gotten word that my dog died. I explained later, and he understood.

Finally, I can't think of Ted without remembering how he played a central role in my enduring love of TGIFridays.  At the end of my job interview, Ted had me sit in his office while he looked at his email, and then we got stuck in traffic on the BWI parkway to get to BWI airport.  I didn't have time to get food at the airport as we arrived just in time.   The plane was diverted to Tulsa or Oklahoma because of thunderstorms at Dallas/Fort Worth airport.  By the time we arrived at DFW around 11:30 all of the restaurants were closed and I had nothing to eat since a job talk lunch (small).  I was too cheap as an assistant professor to take a taxi far away from the airport (since all of the hotels nearby were already full of displaced passengers), so I was set for a long night of hunger pains at the airport.  But in the distance, TGIFridays was still lit.  They served that night until 2am, so I went there, and asked if they were still serving food, and they said yep.  They asked if I wanted a drink, and I said yep!  I then sat there, eating and drinking with my luggage, and scurrying out to grab pillows and blankets (both airplane size small) as they were being distributed.  Finally, they distributed cots, so I grabbed all of my stuff and took the cot to a quiet gate and tried to sleep.  In the morning, I woke up, and saw lots of legs with blue pants sticking out of the boxes that the cots had come in--Air Force cadets using the boxes to sleep--smart folks.  Anyhow, TGIFriday's opened at 6am, so I had breakfast and then got on my plane to Lubbock.  And it was all much more indelibly etched in my mind since Ted took his time reading his email before taking me to the airport.

I chatted with Ted briefly over the past few years at conferences, but we haven't talked much over the past several years.  I will always remember Ted fondly for not giving me a job despite giving one of my best talks as he did make a huge difference in my career--providing me with data that led to some of my most cited and perhaps even influential publications, involving me with a great group of people to improve and then rescue the dataset, and being a hell of a model.  I will never stand as tall as he did, but being perched on his shoulder has given me a hell of a view and a big leg up in this profession.  Rest in peace, Ted. 

APSA 2017: In the Books

Union Square park was very pretty and full of swing dancing

Yesterday, I returned from the latest APSA meeting, this time (and seems like every time) in San Francisco.  Despite the heat (over 100 degrees!), it was a terrific meeting, as I met new people, hung out with friends, learned much from the papers and presentations, got good feedback, and said goodbye to Will Moore.

Ok, SF is super pretty.

I was pretty annoyed that the meeting was in SF, as it was just there a couple of years ago, it will be there again soon, and ISA will be there in the spring of 2018.  Apparently, breaking a lease in 2011 due to a union issue (and leading to fantastic Seattle meeting) has consequences.  SF was both better and worse than I remembered: seems like more good restaurants (Indonesian!) near the hotel but the smell of weed is now seen as a better alternative than to the smell of urine.  The tenderloin district of SF, where the hotel borders, remains tender. 

But the stuff inside the hotel was great.  I think I set a record of how many virtual friends (twitter followers, followees) I met in person.  I really enjoyed those encounters:

• Christina Wolbrecht was dealing with the aftermath of going viral with this great set of tweets.
• Tom Nichols proved to be far sillier in person (better at Jeopardy than at poker, to my good fortune).
• a couple of different folks with anonymous accounts were super-engaging to meet in real life. 
• I was on a panel with Ken Schultz, who I had never met before despite several twitter exchanges over the past couple of years.
• with the last one taking place in the SF/Boston airports as Josh Kertzer helped me navigate my way to the Air Canada part of Logan airport (oy). 
• and many others that I am currently blanking on due to travel-induced amnesia.

I am super-proud of my students.  This time, tis Aisha Ahmad with a fancy new book packed with insights and relevance about the politics of Islamist state-building efforts.






The professional stuff was excellent.  I served as discussant on a panel on nationalism, geography and violence.  I have not worked much in this area for a quite a while as I turned to alliances and civ-mil relations around 2008.  So, I had to use old brain muscles, and it was a pleasure to do so.  The papers were all quite good and got me thinking in new ways about the old stuff.  Turns out separatist violence is still hip.  Good for me, bad for those in the crossfire. 
My panel on civil-military relations was excellent.  The other papers were interesting and spoke to mine, and our discussant, Lindsay Cohn of the Naval War College, was terrific.  It was my first chance to present a paper on whether external threats are leading to better oversight over Japan's Self-Defense Forces (nope). 
David Lake gave his address as outgoing APSA president. I attended since David has long been a terrific ally in my career.  He was not my advisor, although people think he was. We overlapped at UCSD by only a year or two, but he involved me a great edited volume project and has provided great advice over the years.  The intro by Susan Hyde was super-sweet and on target. 

The sad stuff: there was a very sweet memorial roundtable for Will Moore.  Ashley Leeds, Christian Davenport, Idean Salehyan, and several others presented their perspectives on Will and his work.  The audience then shared their memories.  I offered up my take on Will's humor (he was very funny except at his Duckies presentation last spring), as I needed to think of something fun at this time.  Later on, a smaller group met at a bar on the bay, thanks to Michael Ward and David Davis.  It was not a rowdy wake, but a good chance to take advantage of the community that Will had built.

Mona laughs a lot and also makes others laugh quite a bit.

Lisa Baldez, Brian Sala and me in the dark.

The super fun stuff: Mona Lyne was a year behind me in grad school, and had just won a teaching award, so that served as an excuse to party.  We got the band back together--much of those who were in her cohort, mine, plus a few others and including some folks who did not become professors.  It was the first time in 25 years that all of us were together.  Facebook has provided some glue to connect us, but it is not the same as hanging out and yelling at each over belly-dancing music.  Ooops, yeah, the only restaurant that would like a large group without charging incredibly high fees turned out to be a Moroccan place that was very, very loud.  We retired to the Hilton for some story-telling after the dinner.  I am so glad we did this, as I love those folks.  They not only made grad school much better (they were sharp and funny), but made my time in San Diego the highlight of my life (other than College Spew).  I felt kind of goofy taking pictures of folks while they were talking (I have long hated it when photographers disrupt formal occasions), but am glad I did so. 

Mona telling stories.

Listening to Mona's tales of UCSD hijinx from long ago.

Of course, it is revenge for the pics they took of me during my bachelor party of events I didn't remember.

My Moscow Experience

Way back when there was still a Leningrad, I spent two weeks in the Soviet Union.  It was a winter term college trip, led by a Russian language prof and a Soviet politics prof.  We were a group of 20 or so folks, with mixed language skills.  Of course, we stayed only at hotels that were run by intourist, the Soviet government agency that kept track of us.  All of our touring was led by people from this agency.  We were able to go out on our own and did meet some Russians in Moscow and Leningrad and some Estonians in Tallinn.

But the point of this tale is not the friendly folks of the USSR.  No, it was that we constantly joked about being recorded.  We (ok, I) talked into lamps.  It was all fun, and then something strange happened

In between the two beds was a shelf/table built into the wall.  It had a hole/socket in it that would fit the plug for old headphones (not the smaller receptacle we are accustomed to now).  Anyhow, my roomie and I were surprised when a maid knocked, entered the room, and then stuck something into the hole in the shelf.  She then removed it, and left the room.  Was she starting or stopping the recording?  Or was it something else?

 All I know is that what goes in Moscow probably does not stay in Moscow (otherwise, the place is just like Vegas).

Of course, much has changed in thirty years (happy anniversary, college trip to the USSR!).   But honey traps, videotaping high profile folks, and all that?  Not sure that has changed.

I honestly don't know if the Russians have anything on Trump.  Trump's stances are so awful, it almost does not matter if he is a stooge or not.  But yes, it should matter.  Indeed, one of the reasons I got the election wrong is that I thought there were more nevertrumpers among the GOP, who were appalled by Trump's ties to/love of Putin, which were known then.  Ooops, party > country.

Good times, eh?  Nyet.

Halloween Nostalgia

Between Kid Spew becoming College Spew and the move to Ottawa, Halloween is both more and less than it used to be.  So, I wallowed in my FB "on this day" for a while, enjoying the pics of my daughter in costume, of me with my Montreal fall ultimate team (General Admission), and of my costumes for UNICEF fund-raising at McG.

Theo Became Zombie Steve when he guest
lectured on Halloween when I was out of town

On the bright side, our neighborhood, with its 60 plus kids, gets in the spirit of things with many decorations including some very creative stuff.  And tonight, even if it rains, we will be swarmed as our densely packed block is seen by those near and far as prime trick or treating territory. Hopefully, we bought enough candy this year so that Mrs. Spew will not panic.