2024: The Year in Semi-Spew

 It was a year of great contrasts as we lost some important people but also ventured to new places and had some great experiences including the second half of my penultimate sabbatical.  I lost my mother in May, and Mrs. Spew lost hers on Christmas/Hanukah eve.  For both of us, these women played the most significant roles in shaping who we are and how we parent our kid who is damn near 30.  Neither death was a big surprise as both were declining for some time, which meant that 2024 involved a lot of stress about how to manage their respective situations.  

We (meaning mostly me) managed such stress with perhaps more terrific travel in this one year than in any other (I am too lazy to do the math).  It started with an amazing ski trip to Japan with my sister, her guy, and his kids.  Upon return, I immediately went with my brother and then my cousin and his family to a few Magical places--lots of thrilling rides, heaps of silliness, lots of time with the next gen.  We also celebrated

And then very shortly afterwards, I started the first half of my Humboldt Award time in Berlin (second half to start in just over a month).  It was really well timed as my host, the Hertie School, had an event shortly after my arrival on whether Europe was really at a watershed moment and whether countries were acting accordingly.  While in Europe, I got a chance to do something I have always wanted to do--experience the Alp in Alpine.  I also went to Finland to do some fieldwork, and then Mrs. Spew came for some tourism in the middle of Germany and then northern Italy.

I spent more of 2024 working on the previous book project than the next one as we met with some challenges along the way.  In discussing this, someone asked us why it takes so long to publish an academic book, so I had some thoughts.  And then we finally got a book contract for our legislatures and oversight over the armed forces and got the book into the publication process!  

Mrs. Spew's round number birthday by embracing our 1970's-80's by going to a Springsteen concert!  Oh, and I finished the year with another great ski trip with my sister to Mount Bachelor in Oregon. 

Being a doomsayer at various events around Ottawa was a consistent activity for the year, where I predicted that a Trump victory (that I considered unlikely) would be catastrophic.

Defence policy was major news in Canada this year with a defence policy update that came out in April and was revised in July to appease allies.  In the summer, we got a new CDS!

One recurring theme this year was the state of Canadian civil-military relations.  It is not just one part of my research agenda, but an ongoing challenge for the Canadian government and armed forces.  The backlash against culture change is definitely on, and one measure was how many of my posts got comments from people who thought the entire leadership crisis was overblown.  I guess having not one but two heads of the military disgraced was not sufficient?  What is a little obstruction of justice after all?   I will probably post soon about this effort to deny the severity of the GOFO culture crisis even though the fans of the old order will have deaf ears.  Oh, and I have been identified as part of a Liberal party conspiracy to cancel someone has a platform at a national newspaper (despite my best efforts apparently). 

In the broader civil-mil world, lots of discussion about the politicization of the armed forces.  I wrote about it occasionally on the blog and definitely built into the next wave of grant applications.  And those grant applications dominated the latter part of 2024, so much so that I fell behind on the Canadian civ-mil edited volume project.

As we anticipate a very turbulent 2025 with Trump taking power in the US and Canada facing elections at some point soon, I am hoping that our family learns how to get by without our respective matriarchs.  They will be missed.  I hope you and yours have a much happier 2025 despite the political madness.

2023: Not Quite Post Pandemic

Throughout 2023,I kept being sarcastic about being post-pandemic, knowing that COVID was still a major problem, even as we stopped acting as if it was.  And then, of course, I got it the last week of the year.  The year started with COVID--my wife and her family got it when she went down to help her mother when she was hospitalized--as well, so it was a strange year of acting like it was not a thing while it was very much a thing.  Since I am not going to be productive today due to my current bout, I thought I would post about the year so that I could remember now and down the road the non-covid-y parts to the year.

The Year in Spew, 2022!

Do Spew and 2 rhyme?  I sure hope so as I begin my review of the year that was.  The last time I blogged less than I did in 2022 was ... in 2008, when I didn't blog at all.  What explains the decline?  Partly exhaustion, partly a decline in imagination, partly other social media sucking up my time (the podcasts, now tooting as well as tweeting), and partly the reality that I have written enough stuff before that when the topic comes up, it is just easier to repost.  Maybe a look at this year's posts will tell me a bit about what inspires me to write here and what does not, although survivor and recency biases may mesh nicely with my confirmation bias to prevent me from learning that much.  Hmmm.

January

I started by pondering whether JK Rowling has utterly destroyed her legacy--whether I can still consume Harry Potter stuff.  While I concluded that I could still enjoy the world she created, even as she betrays damn near all of it, my behavior, my choices, says otherwise as I had multiple opportunities to watch HP movies while hanging out at my mother-in-law's over the holidays and dodged all of them.  Something I had not done in the past.  Later in the month, I returned to the theme of what kinds of stuff can I read and enjoy given the complex realities of our time.  I wrote about how it has become harder to watch and read cop shows given what we know about cops these days.  I am finishing the latest John Sandford book which features multiple cops, Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport, solving a serial murder spree by bitcoin assholes, and have found it fairly compelling (unlike the most recent Jack Reacher book).  So, maybe I am less affected by the topics than by the behavior of the artist?

The month ended with the start of the occupation of Ottawa by extremists--far right white supremacists.  The year ended with an examination of whether the government should have invoked the Emergency Act.   Um, yeah, but because the emergency was that the provincial leaders were cowards who wanted the feds to own it.

February

The extremists in Ottawa became a focus for me, as it did for most of my city, for most of the month with posts on:

• outbidding, explaining why the Conservatives were pandering to the extremists
• anger, discussing how pissed off this made me, triggered indeed.
• policing, as I learned that Canadians think that the cops should not be directed by the politicians as if policing is not inherently political,
• my take on the Emergency Act.

And then the past came back to bite Ukraine and me.  My previous work on irredentism became relevant again with Russia's invasion of yet more Ukrainian territory. In this post, I explained the basics of irredentism--that it is always bad for the country doing the invading even as it may or may not be bad for its leader, that domestic dynamics are key, and so on.

March

The focus of March was very much on the war in Ukraine.  I argued via a bit of screenwriting why a No Fly Zone was a bad idea. I elaborated about the disease of MOAR.  And, yes, I then invoked my work on irredentism to explain why Putin was willing to kill Russia's kin in order to "save" them.  I wrote about limited war, a topic that got new energy this week as some retired generals expressed much frustration at the unwillingness of the US to send deep strike weapons to Ukraine.

I also blogged about my appearance before the House of Commons Defence Committee.

April

This month had only a few posts, with nearly all focused on CDSN events.  The outlier was a post discussing the appearance of Minister of National Defence Anita Anand in my Civil-Military Relations class. That was super-cool--a great way to finish off that course.

May

I marked my 300,000th tweet before twitter's death spiral... maybe I caused it?

I discussed the two events organized by the CDSN Undergraduate Excellence Scholars--a conference and a hackathon.  I also went to Germany for another conference. Woot!

My last post took a first look at the Arbour report, where a retired Supreme Court Justice assessed the Canadian Armed Forces and why it has fallen short, yet again, on reforming itself when it comes to sexual misconduct.  I took a quick tour of the 48 recommendations.  

June

I didn't write much in June, but two of my posts continued my examination of the Arbour Report: here and here.  In the first one, I pushed on a point that will become a key question in my next project--what is the proper rule of a defence department or ministry or agency?  Arbour says DND is to support the CAF, and, no, nope, nuh uh.  This does help to explain a big problem with this and previous reports--having a very limited view of what DND's job is.  I also focus on the lack of a recommendation for an Inspector General, which is now a topic of research of this year's Visiting Defence Fellow.

I also marked my 10 years in Ottawa with this post. I am so glad that the tides of the academic job market washed me ashore here.  It was not my plan, but it has worked out wonderfully.

July

July was a month of ups and downs.  I started the month by pondering how long might the autocratic moment in the US last if Democracy were to give way.  The most pivotal building at my old summer camp burned down, but there was much resilience that day and beyond to give me hope for its future.

One of the ups was the new season of Battle Rhythm.  I am forever grateful to Stéfanie von Hlatky for helping us launch our podcast, and I was sad to see her move to admin stuff at her university.  But we got re-energized by a new crew of co-hosts.  Artur, Anessa, Erin, and Linna have provided a variety of perspectives since they joined us.  I am most grateful to Melissa Jennings for doing most of the heavy lifting in this effort and to Carelove Doreus and Racheal Wallace for their carrying the rest of the load. 

It has been a big year in Canadian civil-military relations, and one of the highlights was the decision to adjust the uniform standards to make the CAF more welcoming to more people.  I addressed these changes with some accidental foreshadowing of the awful Vimy speech by one of those responsible for the culture crisis that prevented the CAF from adapting sooner.

The month, which started with COVID finally hitting me and Mrs. Spew thanks to a conference trip to Berlin, ended in an upswing with both Beulahfest as my mom celebrated her 90th birthday and, yes, Stevefest, as I did a heap of stuff to celebrate another year of me.

 

August

Not many posts this month as I was very busy organizing and then

hosting the first in-person CDSN Summer Institute.  It was one of the original ideas animating the big grant application, and it was great to see it finally come to fruition with so many sharp people speaking and participating.  Plus it was an excuse to have a reception or three.  Just a great week worth all the effort by the CDSN team.

Much news about classified documents thanks to Trump hoarding documents he should have had anymore, so I shared what I had learned during the year I had a top secret clearance and worked every day in a SCIF--secure compartmented information facility.

Finally, I said goodbye to a key part of my life--ultimate frisbee.  I just kept getting injured and could not stay on the field.  I could still throw well, but that whole running thing proved to be too much.  I very much miss it, it gave me friends across North America, it gave me some level of fitness, it gave me heaps of silliness, and nothing can fill the hole it left behind, alas.  

September

Another light month for blogging.  I wrote a guide for those visiting Montreal for the American Political Science Association meeting.  

The focus of the month and of my career these days was/is civil-military relations.  I wrote about the retired generals and SecDefs providing advice on how to manage this relationship. And then I addressed a recurring challenge up here--should the Canadian military prioritize domestic emergency operations? Whether the CAF wants to or not (not), climate change is going to make this happen.  It already has.  I am getting more and more interested in studying domestic emergency ops in part because few defence scholars have done so.  Nothing like having a wide open field to pass the disk into.  Oh wait, that was last month's post about ultimate.

One reason I didn't post more in September is that I was headed west to Disneyland and to visit my daughter (not necessarily prioritized that way?).

October

I gave thanks for all kinds of stuff as Canada celebrates Thankgiving in October when Americans debate the role of Columbus.

I spent the rest of the month preparing both the CDSN Midterm Report for one of our funders and a conference to mark the midway point in our SSHRC grant.  It was great to hear from the co-directors of the various research efforts--Civ-Mil Relations, Personnel, Security, and Operations.  We were once told that the CDSN was just me and my friends dong stuff, but, to be clear, when it started, many of those who joined as co-directors were not friends and some were barely acquaintances.  Now, we are friends, but isn't that how networking works when it works well?  I am very proud of what we have put together even if it put a major dent in my blogging.

November

Was the theme of the month commenting on other people's mistakes?  Seems like it with a post on twitter's dramatic decline thanks to Musk and then the craptastic speech by a retired general.  That post generated more hits than any other this year and is in the top five of my 13 years of blogging.  The related tweet was also the most tweeted/impressioned tweet of the year and then some.  

It led to a post addressing "woke" and being "anti-woke," which helped me think about vice-signaling, the flipside of virtue-signaling. 

I got to put on my old NATO hat when some errant missiles from Ukraine's war with Russia landed in Poland.  I did much media as well to explain that NATO does not work the way may folks think--that there is nothing automatic about it, even if the attack had been deliberate.

One reason I blog less is that I simply have not been writing that much about pop culture here.  Why?  Mostly due to lack of time.  One exception to this was thinking about the International Politics of the second Black Panther movie.

December

The year ended with much CDSN and much cookies!

I went to Winnipeg for the first time for a CDSN workshop on Domestic Emergency Operations.  This is the focus of one of our four MINDS (DND) funded research projects.  I learned a great deal from sharp people both in and out of the government.  There is much work to do here, and I am glad we have made this one of our foci over the next three years.

Once again, we held an end of the year conference, the Year Ahead, which addresses some of the issues on the horizon.  This year, we also launched the new CDSN Podcast Network at the event!  The CDSN Podcast Network brings together four podcasts--Battle Rhythm, Conseils de Sécurité, SecurityScape and NATO Field Report.  We are open to adding others down the road.  Along the way, we fixed our Apple podcast feed.  I am most excited not just for having a new home for BattleRhythm but connecting and amplifying some student-run podcasts.

I finished the year with a heap of baking--cookies for friends around Ottawa.  The basic idea is this: I want to eat a lot of different kinds of cookies.  But then making so many different kinds means finding people who are willing to take most off my hands or else I will gain a heap of weight (winterfest did that anyway).  I enjoyed my first cookiefest in 2020, which was the first time I saw many people after months and months of quarantining.  So, I keep doing it, now armed with better equipment (kitchen aid stand mixer makes it much easier than the first cookie fest) and more recipes.  It is not just the baking and the eating.  I got to chat with a bunch of great people as I delivered the cookies.  If the cookies are joy (and, yes, they are), giving joy leads to receiving much joy.

One of the interesting dynamics of 2022 was the re-emergence of blogging.   That many folks started writing on substack, which, to me, seems like blogging but with the chance of income.  I have not moved over there as I am pretty happy with this perch. It does not make me money, but I doubt that people would pay that much for my half-baked (semi-spewed) writings.  One of my New Year's Resolutions is to blog more.  My guess is that I will be more successful at that than the ones focused on dietary restraint.

May you and yours have a terrific 2023!

A Bitter Edition of an Annual Tradition: The Spew Year in Review

 Around this time every year, I look back at my year of blogging.  I do this partly because I am a narcissist and partly so that I have a handy place to keep links to the notable posts of the year for future reference.  This year?  It also, as my first Quarantine post noted, helps chart my descent into madness.  And, of course, given how much happened this year, it also helps to remind me all that happened in this most dismal of years.  The key to getting through this year: stress baking!

The year started with a bang, alas, as the American assassination of Iranian Qasssem Suleiman.  The Iranians, undeterred, retaliated.  The series of escalations led not to war (although that was pretty close) but to the downing of an airliner by Iranian anti-aircraft batteries, which was awful but happens in such times.  

The primaries didn't drag on as long as expected, but, jeez, they were not fun.  So glad the Dems did not reward their billionaire with votes.

The highlight of my year, partly because some of the really cool stuff (Hawaii, South Africa) got cancelled by COVID, was a trip to Japan just as the pandemic was breaking out of China and Iran and Italy.  The tour guides referred to me as Sensei, as if I were wise.  The only relevant wisdom I had was where to find the most amazing French toast.  It was great to see a different part of Japan and to meet the families that hosted the students I was chaperoning.  Oh and much sake!  Kampai!

Capstone dinner

JC organizes the survey

The CDSN did both more and less than expected.  Our Capstone event was literally the last trip I had before things locked down.  It was great to meet and provide a platform for the hotshots who gave the best presentations of 2019 that were organized by our partners.  The 2021 version will, alas, be virtual.  The 2020 Summer Institute got pushed to 2021.  However, our COVID Rapid Response Conference was a success.  We brought together our members to answer questions that had been posed by the Department of National Defence, we provided some preliminary answers, and these helped provide some research agendas for our graduate students this past summer, keeping them off the streets.  We created a summer seminar for PhD students since they lost most of their chances to present research and to network.  The survey that we put out produced some very interesting results... and also gave me an excuse to go to skiing with Roland Paris who happened to be in Calgary at the same time! 

Some of the blogging addressed how it challenged academics in their research and teaching including what to do in the fall with the obvious answer that online was best, if not great.

While every year has much civil-military relations to discuss, this year was, well, over the top.  Lots of talks of coups whether to remove Trump or keep him in power.  The post that got the most hits this year was on the worst day of American Civil-Military relations in quite some time--the clearing of Lafayette park with the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff playing a very visible role.  The context was, of course, the Black Lives Matter movement and the need for extensive, systemic, and systematic police reform.  One of the highlights of my year was the efforts by my daughter, Activist Spew.  I helped make a word a thing, more so than fetch: autogolpe.  I kept insisting that Trump was not trying to launch a coup since coups require both changes in who is in power and the use of security forces.  Only very late in the year did he muse about the military and then, of course, he vetoed a bill that would give them a raise.  I had one priority for Biden's cabinet, and, well, it did not work out so well.

The election, as endless as it seemed, has had much less violence than I expected.  Ah, I am a victim of the tyranny of low expectations.  Speaking of low expectations, I didn't really know what to make of the Lincoln Project.  I often enjoyed their ads but worried about their sharpening their axes for future work against the Dems.  I was a bit over the top, but got most of the states right.

One of the highlights of the year was marking a mistake Canada made in 1945--signing the surrender document in the wrong place.

The other highlight was fall ultimate.  Summer and winter were lost due to injury and pandemic respectively, but I got to run around with some fun folks for a number of Sundays.  I hope I can do the same next summer.  

And, yes, death was all around us.  I lost a friend from grad school--Neil Englehart.  We did organize a zoom wake, which provided some solace and also educated me a bit about Neil's life as well as what other members of my cohort have been up to.  We also lost Sean Kay, a scholar I knew but not well.  

We are all glad 2020 is at an end.  I am not sure how much better 2021 will be--the pandemic is not going to magically go away very quickly.  But Trump will be on the margins, and that will do a lot to improve my attitude and many other things.  There will be much griping about Biden, and the Dems will fight among themselves.  And that will be far better than what we have had.  

It has been a very tough year. I hope you and yours managed to get through this with a minimum of scars.  Keep on keeping on.  

Year in Review, part 2: What Got More Attention?

I don't write posts or tweets to maximize hits.  For instance, I had no idea that my tweet yesterday would get more than 1k likes.   I have very little strategy besides express what I think.  But I used to be a narcissist until Trump tainted that as well, so I like to look back and see what played more broadly.  Not to change how I blog, but just curious.

So, here's the top ten posts of 2018 according to google analytics with some commentary:

1. McGill's Shame Continues.  This post from 2016 keeps getting hits, partly because I keep linking to it in other sexual harassment stories.  That was, in some ways, one of the riskiest posts I have written, but I did so because I wanted to warn folks about a serial sexual harasser.  That people will not convey who is the bad guy to avoid, and so someone new will have their career damaged.  That this post serves as continuing warning is a good thing.  Of course, the real test is after this generation of grad students moves on.
2. ISA Sexual Harassment In The News.  The story about Richard Ned Lebow's elevator joke and the subsequent reactions got heaps of play at the Semi-Spew as well as elsewhere.  It only seems that whenever I write about the ISA, it is bad news.  I was worried at the time that this particular event would trivialize claims about sexual harassment. 
3. Reflections on L'Affaire Lebow.  A very rare guest post, this one by Tanisha Fazal, put Lebow into context.  Tanisha did a great job of explaining her experience with the professor at the heart of the controversy.  By the way, notice a theme here?
4. Advice for the First Year Professor.  Finally, a non-sexual harassment post.  In August, folks on twitter were pondering what they would say to someone starting out, so I tried to remember and offered my take.  Be chill might be the shorthand--do what you can, but don't set goals/expectations too high.
5. Institutional Sexism.  Yes, the post that led to the one at the top of the charts.  A brief venting of how institutions protect themselves more than their students via covering everything in confidentiality sauce.
6. The Last Father's Day.  What started out as acknowledging that my daughter is now fully out of the nest became something else as my father died on father's day.  I very much appreciate the support and kindnesses that the readers of my blog as well as twitter followers and facebook friends.
7. How to Explain the Academic Job Market to Non-Academics. We academics compete in a strange market that is hard for outsiders to explain.  I came up with a bunch of handy rules that illustrate some of the complexities and challenges.
8. Social Media Etiquette From Me?  This recent post might be the most hypocritical thing I have written, as I am not so restrained except in comparison to those who are completely unconstrained.
9. Appalling, Not Shocking, Academic Edition.  I address the Jorge Dominguez story at Harvard--of decades of getting away with sexual harassment.
10. Comparative Xenophobia, part I.  And oldie from 2013, which probably continues to get hits thanks to being featured on the old Max Fisher WashPo page.   The only post on this top ten list that actually is focused on what I have studied.  My old work on ethnic conflict is hip again thanks to both catastrophic separatist referenda (Brexit) and the rise of xenophobia.  This piece focused on a newspaper report about academic work, and I used it to discuss how identity is complex.

Should I be troubled that few of my posts on my areas of research--civ-mil relations, alliances, and ethnic conflict--get heaps of hits?  Maybe. While I think that stuff is important, it is clear that those issues resonate locally.  That sexual harassment got half of the top spots?  Probably not as #metoo and all that remains quite important and resonates broadly.  My advice to academics, especially younger ones, tends to get more play.  Whether it is good advice or gets heeded?  No idea.

The honorable mentions do include more of a mix: Trump Rules, Finding Co-Authors, Don't Get a Phd, Rules for Writing One's CV, Why Do We Care about Ethnic Outbidding, Civil-Mil Relations and Trump's Ego, Canada Should Look East?

As I said, I will not change what I do in light of this--I will still write about civ-mil often since that is my research focus and US foreign policy as that is what I am teaching this winter/spring.  Will I write less about sexual harassment?  Probably not, as it is not going away, alas. Will I write less about Trump?  Maybe, as it is exhausting and I am exhausted.

Thanks again for reading my musings, half-baked as they are. And, yes, full of typos. 

The Year in Semi-Spew, 2018

Every year, either to defer grading or to celebrate the end of grading, I look back at the year and I how blogged it.  This year continues a trend--I have blogged less each year since my second (and first full year) of blogging.  So, have I had much less to say?  No, I think I have about as much to spew as usual.  However, I find myself reposting old spews often since I often repeat myself one way or another.  Plus this year was a very busy one, in mostly good ways, so that cut into blogging time and attention.  I make no promises about next year except to keep on keeping on. 

Year in Review: Finding the Spew

As part of the navel gazing exercise at the end of the year, I pondered how folks found ye olde Spewe.

Top Ten Traffic Sources

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Blogger
5. My McGill site
6. Political Science Jobs Rumors.  I am one of the very few folks there that posts non-anonymously (probably a better way to say that).  I do get some crap for it from folks online (and far less from my chair despite what folks occasionally suggest when they post on the site).  I am often viewed as a voice of reason there.  Which says far more about the site than it does about me.
7. Duck of Minerva.  I started posting there a while back, and I usually cross-post, putting there things I post here that I think will have broad interest for the IR scholarly community.  My posting there is not consistent at all.  I tend to filter myself more there.  The other bloggers there are very sharp folks, so I tend to be a bit intimidated.  This does not mean that my best stuff appears there--just the stuff that I think sucks less.
8. Fully Myelinated: Lil' Steve's blog.  He likes my stuff, and I like his.  The best part of not being in the same department is that I would never win a teaching award with him around.  Alas, that is the only good part.  Miss the little guy and his mad band of gingers (Weasleys?  Indeed).  
9. Phil Arena's blog: Someone I have yet to met in real life.  A younger, more rigorous IR scholar. 
10. Drezner's blog.  He has so many followers that all it takes is for one reference on his blog to me and I get a huge jump in hits.  He has a lot of followers for good reasons--sharp, succinct, often amusing, always relevant posts. 

 Given that google is #1, the next question is what kind of searches lead to the Spew aside from those who throw my name with or without spew into google:

1. Hogwarts Houses     same as last year--JK-related posts still get heaps of attention.
   
2. Paul Robinson, Afghanistan: catches my post where I rant about folks who say Afghanistan militarized Canada somehow.
3. Ranking the Star Wars Movies was also on top last year.
4. Alouette (looking perhaps for the CFL team, but finding my post on the Canadian fighter squadron north of Quebec).
5. McGill Strike: people would find a number of posts as I addressed both the staff strike and the student tuition strike several times.
6. ISA, looking for my guide to Montreal.
7. For your situational awareness: where I link to a cool blog that was occasionally dispensing Pentagon-ese to the masses.
8. McGill sucks. Gets my posts on students opposing tuition increases.  Probably some of these folks are finding the opposite of that which they are seeking.
9. Pre-electoral coalitions Australia.  Really?  Hmm.
10. Quebec Patriotic Militia.  I love it that people searching for this fringe group end up finding my blog posts on it.