Grade Inflation Day

With the fall semester rapidly approaching (yes, I should be getting real work done rather than blogging, but I am awaiting a dataset), the thoughts of students turns to orientation and meeting new folks.  The thoughts of everyone else inevitably turns to grade inflation.  The Beast has a great series of graphics here.  I tend to give more B's than A's and only a hefty number of C's in my big intro class.  So, I still have a bell-ish curve usually, just higher at the one end. 

Actually, some of the other stats in the graphic are more disturbing: that hefty number of students think that showing up should be sufficient.  I did have a conversation with a grad student (not one of mine) in my previous job who said--if you are here long enough, you deserve the degree.  Oy, I hit the roof.  Education is more than just about endurance.

Why less than 20 pages of writing required?  In my case, I blame .. the unions.  The teaching assistant unions to be specific.  We have a strict limit on the number of hours they can work, and those hours include showing up at lectures, email contact hours, hours in discussion sections (called conferences up here), weekly meetings (necessary for my big class where I have eight or so TAs to keep on the same page), and so on.  So, either I cut back on how much grading they do or I cut back on how much contact they have with the students, more or less.  So, my intro students get about 15-18 pages of writing (two papers and a final).  My advanced students get just a bit more than 20, with one big research paper, one shorter paper and sometimes a final.  Of course, I could just do more grading myself, but the incentives certainly do not point that way.  Plus I hate grading. 

My students very much do have to read more than 40 pages a week to get by.  Of course, such a stat is deceptive since some courses are not as reading intensive as others.  Math?  Hmmm.  But social sciences are reading heavy.  I guess I average (if I am thinking real hard about the numbers) about 100-150 pages of reading a week, depending on the level of the class.  I am sure my students are willing to do the math to prove I assign more.  But some of those pages will be Zombie-related, so they can moan all they want to.

What is worse than grade inflation?  That lower standards are most common in programs that focus on educating educators.  I observed early in my career and often since that students who are majoring in Education generally have the worst performance.  Not all, but I used to guess pretty accurately the majors of students who were getting low C's and D's in my courses.

It is important to note Canada and especially McGill do not suffer as much from grade inflation.  Indeed, a few of my colleagues systematically engage in grade deflation.  I don't get that much whining about grades here because my colleagues have beaten down their expectations.  This is good for me, as I am probably easier than most of them but still more demanding, I think, than the average in the US (if the numbers in the article cited up above are correct). 

However, it is BAD for our students who want to get into grad programs in the US.  After linking to the grade inflation pieces on twitter this morning, I got a twitter reply back from a prof at George Washington University (Dan Nexon) who noted that Canadians suffer in comparison to Americans due to grade deflation up here.  I assumed this might be a problem--nice to know for sure.  So, I include text in my recommendation letters addressing the grading differences--although that may or may not help that much.

As Dan noted, what we really need is some sort of solution to the collective action problem since those folks who are tough grades face all kinds of problems, including lower teaching evals, flack from parents, hurting the students relative to others in jobs and grad school applications, and so on. 

But I am skeptical. Profs are hard enough to herd when their numbers are small.  Getting all of us to agree to anything?  Ha! 

Random Recognition

Somaliland counts!

Ok, perhaps not so great, but this map by the World Food Programme essentially recognizes the existence of Somaliland.  As the map shows, Somaliland is better off than Somalia--yet again. 

Somaliland is a proud member of a club of countries not allowed in the club of countries.  Byman and King had a nice piece in the NYT this week documenting the problems raised by "phantom" states. They recommend:

transparent government, free elections and a peaceful foreign policy are as vital for phantom states as they are for real ones. If phantom governments behave well, they should be offered a path toward legitimacy by the world’s major powers. Economic and political reforms can proceed parallel to, and even bolster, discussions over sovereignty.

Good luck with that. Their orphan status is a product of political conflict, not just aversion to changing international boundaries (O-ver-RAY-ted).  The political problems that create these non-entities are very hard to resolve, so waving a magic wand is unlikely to do the trick.

The funny thing is that I was thinking of these kinds of countries after listening to Bill Simmons's podcast with NBA commissioner David Stern.  The commish mentioned that the NBA appears in 215 countries or so, but the UN only has 192 countries or so.  Which means the NBA appears in countries that are lacking in the rule of law and then some.  Verrry interesting.  To me, at least.

Dog Days of August

For the first time since 1992, my family is dog-less.  We got Flynn (the smaller one) shortly after we were married from a shelter in San Diego, and we got Tessa (the larger one) shortly before my daughter was born.  Flynn died a few years ago while I was away at a conference.  We had to put Tessa to sleep yesterday after she handled a week at a kennel rather poorly.  We usually used dog-sitters so that they would not have to endure the stress of a kennel, which, in our minds anyway, is too much like the animal shelters where we found them. 

But Tessa was about 17 and was starting to lose the ability to stand and to walk even before we went on vacation.  Indeed, we faced a few points over the past six months when we thought about doing what we had to do yesterday. 

Flynn was clearly my favorite of the two, with Tessa being more neurotic, especially early on.  Flynn was simply too cool, with our move from Vermont to Texas producing many sad-faces in New England.  He had charmed not only all the large female dogs in the townhouse development but also their owners.  Tessa was still a sweetheart, and she will be missed, even though she used to wake up the baby long ago by barking at any time a leaf flew by the front of the house.

I post this not to get more sympathy--facebook provided aplenty--but to explain why blogging has been infrequent lately.  Losing Tessa will greatly simplify our lives and save us a fair amount of money, certainly, but she will be missed.  Perhaps Game of Thrones will show more of the black Direwolves next season to remind us of Tessa as Friday Night Lights briefly teased with a Flynn-esque Skeeter.

And, no, we will be getting any more dogs.  We loved the dogs we had, we love the ones we encounter, but we hope to travel more in the next few years.  We were glad we could save a couple of shelter dogs, including one that had clearly been abused, giving them really, really long lives.  If you like dogs, get a shelter dog.  Pure-breds are for Slytherin.  If you want a dog with character and heart, get a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff at a shelter near you.

Holy Socks! Somebody Found a Metric I Was Looking For!

I have often complained about how hard it is to measure progress in a COIN effort, especially Afghanistan.  And I have often said that if I knew what the trends were in actionable intel tips, I would have a clue about progress.  Well, it is a good thing there are grad students who are collecting this data because: TA-DA:

Using the infamous Wikileaks Afghan War Diary data, my advisor David Sobek and I found that collaboration between Afghan locals and U.S. forces, in terms of turning over or pointing out caches of insurgent forces has increased since the president ordered a surge in forces in early 2009. We also find that collaboration breeds collaboration. In other words, while there isn’t much cause to celebrate yet, U.S. forces are beginning to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

A problem with the link is making it hard to read their paper.   And I would use the phrase credibility rather than hearts and minds--the Afghans might have found American/NATO commitment more credible and as more credible partners but that they love us and think like us (hearts and minds)?  Not so much.  But this is really cool, if the info is right.  Of course, lots of other stuff going on, but if the patterns of intel tips is what is suggested here, then we have some progress.  The question then is--what is the pattern now as the US starts to reduce and after the Dutch and Canadians have, as they say in French, skedaddled? 

Bachmann Overdrive

I have tried to avoid paying attention to the American election campaign. I am depressed enough as it is.  Plus it is way too soon.  But Kathy Griffin is just, well, mighty terrific in this piece on Conan.  Bumping into Bachmann, Griffin asked her:

"Were you born a bigot or did you just, like, grow into it?"

The answer:

"Good question.  I will have to get back to you on that."

As Monty Python skit number 47 would say: Say no more!

Hobbes Was Right for the Wrong Reasons

Famously, Thomas Hobbes argued in the state of nature, life is nasty, brutish and short.  It turns out he was way ahead of his time. Turns out that watching television may shorten one's life.  So, if you notice that I stopped blogging, it might be that TV killed me.  I watch a heap--so I should be dropping dead soon.  Just fair warning.

Afghanistan and the Pundits

Check out this cool graphic of where the various pundits fit on Afghanistan.  Where would I fit?  Probably somewhere near the President's plan, I suppose.  My ambivalence makes me hard to code.

The larger point is that we have a whole heap of dissensus on the issue.  This may not be a representative list of names--perhaps an accurate survey would have more folks in one corner of the circle (yes, a circle can have corners if I say so).  But the key is that we should stop saying with any sense of incredulity that the people are confused by Afghanistan when the messengers and the decision-makers (not to mention the war itself) are so very confused.  Of course, publics are confused.  The situation itself is fairly opaque, counter-insurgency is less easy to measure than conventional war (where there are often surprises as well), and the elites do not have any level of coherence on this.

I believe it was Feaver (need to re-read civ-mil stuff for winter semester's course) who argued that public support for war correlates highly with elite consensus, which goes a long way to explaining why the war used to be popular but is no longer.  I do think he was right on this, if not on everything.

Royally Amused

The Canadian Department of National Defence is putting Royal back in the names of the forces that fly and sail: the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy.  Twitter has been a fun outlet for those in favor or against.  As some noted, Canada's RCMP stands for Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the ships are Her Majesty's ....., so this is no big deal.

But to an ex-pat American, this does seem like a strange move now.  Embracing royal-ness in the 21st century?  I guess any way to get closer to Kate Middleton makes sense.

See here for quotes from my friends in Ottawa.

Good Advice to Grad Students

Some slides that present good advice to grad students as they move past their first classes.

Canada and NATO: Irrelevant?

Granatstein, apparently the dean of Canadian diplomatic historians (I say apparently since I am neither Canadian nor an historian), has written a piece questioning the relevance of NATO.  If he were an American, I might have to make an argument.  However, for a Canadian, this is a relatively silly question to ask given the absence of alternatives. 

The US can and occasionally does go it alone, perhaps covering its unilateralism with a fig leaf of supporting countries.  Canada simply cannot act militarily in the world without help.  So, the choice is either go bilateral with the US or multilateral with NATO, as there is no other viable security-producing institution in the world (nope, the UN does not count).  Its military is simply too small and lacking in key capabilities to do much abroad (or defend itself). 

What about the facts in the piece?  Well, yes, the US did send 1,000 troops to southern Afghanistan, but that was part of a deal that brought a French battalion to the dangerous area of Kapisa near Kabul.  The French wanted to go East, not South, largely for logistical reasons. NATO worked in this case by facilitating the redeployment of Americans before the big surge and because Sarkozy wanted NATO to succeed.

Granatstein is also right in suggesting that Afghanistan is not a huge success story, but consider the context--is it NATO's fault or is it due to the situation?  I would not use Afghanistan as a good measure of what NATO cannot do, after countries have bled in a war far away from Europe just to support an ally a la Article V.

The piece does tend to overplay the "Europeans" didn't fight thing, as even an author of book on caveats (well, soon) would not say that Europeans didn't fight.  Not only did the Danes and the Dutch fight in the South, along with the Poles in the east, even the Germans and Italians, handcuffed by domestic politics, still bled and fought.  Yes, some countries fought harder, but Canada was hardly alone and the NATO blessing to the mission meant it was possible for others to participate.  Hard to get missions through parliaments without a thick gloss of multilateralism.

Oh yeah, true for Canada as well.  Canadians are more likely to support a multilateralism mission.  Isn't that one of the lessons of 2003?

Granatstein's final take:

And where does this leave Canada? Ottawa has been fed up with the way most NATO members hid under the bushes to avoid Afghanistan and Libya while Canadians fought and died. That ought to lead to a serious re-examination of the utility of the alliance, of its worth to us in the immediate and longer-term future. But NATO contains most of our friends in the world and, while the grumbling among the mandarins and politicians continues, there is unlikely to be any immediate interest in pulling out.
But in diplomacy as in baseball, it's three strikes and you're out. Afghanistan was strike one; Libya was strike two. And strike three? No one yet knows where the next call for action might be - Syria? - but if NATO funks it again, then the pressure from Ottawa and, possibly, Washington may be irresistible. NATO has lasted more than 60 years, but even historic alliances can become so attenuated and powerless that their irrelevance can no longer be ignored.

Convenient to ignore Bosnia and Kosovo--where the casualties have been few and the peace relatively robust.  Also strange to mention Syria as no one is really thinking of doing anything there.  Is NATO really supposed to intervene and stop all violence?  Rwanda would have meant NATO was irrelevant in the 1990s.  Or Somalia?  Oops.

As a committed skeptic of conditionality, I still see the merit NATO had in helping the democratization of Eastern Europe by both providing security guarantees and helping to develop civilian control of the militaries.  

Back to the main point: with broken submarines and a navy with few significant platforms, a small air force, and limited defense budgets down the road, how can Canada either defend itself on its own or intervene anywhere in the world without significant help?  Relying solely on the US is one way to go, but not popular in Canada and perhaps not a wise strategy to always be a mouse with little influence on the elephant.  NATO institutions give Canada some sway, especially when Canada "punches above its weight."  No institutions means that there is no place for a LTG Bouchard to run the Libyan campaign.  If the purpose of a military is just defense, NATO is necessary.  If the purpose is to have influence, NATO is still relevant as it has amplified Canadian influence in Europe, the North Atlantic, the Med and A-stan.  Not too shabby.

Yes, the institution has problems and caveats have been challenging (but Canada has them too).  But the reality is that there are not abundant choices, and NATO has done both better and worse than its critics/fans aver.

Cutting Defense: First, Steal Some Underwear

The NYT had an interesting piece on defense cuts that must occur for any serious deficit cutting to occur.  The graphics show the trends in spending:

 

The first shows quite clearly that the "easiest" way to get back to a normal spending level is simply to stop funding war.  Getting out of Iraq will eventually pay off, once the US un-surges from Afghanistan.  War is simply expensive, but Bush, unfortunately, did not feel he needed to pay for the wars he started.  Iraq was especially expensive and will be for generations due to the injuries incurred by the Americans who fought it and survived (the US will not be paying the bills for other countries' veterans). 
This picture also makes its clear why there is some urgency about getting done with Afghanistan.  But that is a bit harder to do simply because there is not a reliable partner to take over (yes, Karzai makes the Iraqi folks look reliable).

So, war will continue in Afghanistan.  Libya will cost some but not nearly as much.  What else to cut?

Here is where the tradeoffs get hard.  If you want to cut the numbers of planes purchased, do you also want to cut the older planes?  Is upkeep of those more or less expensive than the maintenance of the new planes?  The A-10 is an old, old plane but a unique platform for doing precisely the kind of stuff that needs to be done--air to ground attacks. 

The other really hard part is reforming pay and benefits.  Mostly because there are entrenched constituencies for this kind of stuff--making the soldiers and sailors and marines and air-folk pay more for their benefits is deeply unpopular with them and their pals in the Congress.  It is funny that I resist Verizon's efforts to make their workers pay but not so much efforts to make the folks in the armed forces pay.  Perhaps because Verizon execs are getting paid far more than the President, SecDef, Chairman and the like.  Anyhow, tangent aside, the challenge is that it is easy to recommend stuff to be cut, but it is hard to figure out ways to make cuts politically possible.  Policy experts need to think more about step b (underwear gnome's shoulder shrug) between policy recommendation and policy outcome. 

Good thing my job is simply to point this out rather than come up with ways to convince Congress to make hard decisions.

Geek Bucket List

Interesting post on what geeks would like to do before they die.  Which ones would I want to do?  Some random thoughts below:
1. Get Superpowers.   Naturally.  Addressed this before.
4. Become  Jedi.  Course of want I.
10.  Ban all re-boots, re-numbering and multiverses within comic books.  Oh, my, yes!
15.  Sit in on a film, comic book and pop culture discussion with Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, Roddenberry, etc.
22.  Kill a Zombie w/ a vinyl record, the Batman soundtrack or Dire Straits....  Oh, I have a few albums I could toss.
26. Go to a bar with Mal and Zoe on Unification Day (although I don't remember what Unification Day is about).  Must get Firefly series on DVD.

32. Be able to download new skills a la the Matrix.  Ah, but which skills.
37. Pass the Kobayashi Maru with flying colors.  Don't need to pass, just take.
40. Solve a crime with a group of meddling kids and their dumb dog.
47. Trick William Shatner into one last, great Kaaaaahnnnnn!!  Just tell him it is an audition for a new series.
49. Walk through saloon doors ominously. Absolutely, rootin' and tootin'
53. Take part in a "Fastball Special" with Wolverine.  Actually, I would want the wolvie part--to be thrown.
62. Play a game of thermonuclear war with WOPR.
63.  Revoke George Lucas's writing privileges.  And, more importantly, directing!
69. Defeat the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Actually, I would prefer to heave the Holy Hand Grenade at the anarchist.
75.  Drink Butterbeer.  Someday soon.
76. Wield a Lightsaber.  A flashlight just is not the same.
79.  Roadtrip with Jay and Silent Bob.
80.  Re-kill a zombie.
81. Train a pet dragon.
92. Ride along with the Vegan Police.  As long as I can continue not to be a Vegan.

Got it down to just over twenty.  Not bad.  And you?

Blogging Vacation Ends ... Tomorrow

Just got back from vacation, so blogging will commence with a bit more frequency and depth (well, perhaps not so much the latter) tomorrow.  Luckily, I do have some meat stored up--Granatstein wrote a pretty dumb piece on NATO while I was off boating and climbing.  So, the fish in the barrel have been lined up.  


If anything happened in Montreal last week, let me know as I did not get any news.  I did, however, drive out of my way (west off the island) to avoid the various bridges and tunnels that were closed/failing/falling.  So, I am ready to rant about Mtl infrastructure if there is any new story to focus my ire.

I am a Master-mind?

I have blogged last month about why I blog.  As it turns out, I may have been deceiving myself and my readers.  It turns out that I am far more strategic than I thought, as blogging may increase one's reputation in the field, if political scientists are anything like economists (that is our aspiration as they make more money). 

I do know that more folks are aware of certain scholars because of their web 2.0 (or whatever) efforts, such as Dan Drezner, Marc Lynch, the folks at the Duck of Minerva and elsewhere.  But more visibility may not mean a better reputation, just perhaps a reputation for being silly, distracted, entertaining, snarky, indiscreet, whatever.  I would guess that the nature of the heightened reputation would largely be shaped by the quality of the blog.  To use Drezner as an example, I am pretty sure he is positively viewed by most folks, although the nattering nabobs of negativism at Political Science Job Rumors see Drezner negatively.  Not a surprise, but does provide the dose of caution that more visibility can provoke jealousy as well as admiration. 

So, the folks behind the first post asked the next question--impact on policy?  Their next post may provide some data to answer the question, but they are asking folks to provide their own views on this.  An interesting conversation to follow.  

Coach Finishes Strong

I think Friday Night Lights ended wonderfully, but I don't mind hearing the speech that might have been.  Coach apparently had a speech that would have run over the ending montage.  I see why they didn't use it, but it is fun to get one last bit of the show.

Transition Skeptic

Check out my new post at Current Intelligence.  Consider me a transition skeptic. 

And next one will be thoughts about ten years after 9/11.

It is Not Just Me

Check out this piece at Foreign Policy.com which applies the logic of post-conflict politics/policy recommendations to the aftermath of the War Against the Dark Lord.  See, I am not the only scholar of conflict that is excessively obsessed with Harry Potter.  I have heaps of company, and this particular piece is a particularly useful exercise.

Academic Humor Graphic Du Jour

From http://sotak.info/

School's Out. Let's Talk About School

Several interesting posts from people who know well the pro's and con's of advanced degrees and life doing foreign policy stuff.  Check out the discussion spawned by Andrew Exum and Erin Simpson and then commented on by Dan Drezner,  Robert Farley and James Joyner.

Most of these folks have more policy experience than I do (one year), more experience with policy schools (none yet, although IR/PS was near the UCSD poli sci dept and I worked with profs who were based at IR/PS), but I have had students move on to policy positions and most of my PhD students have found tenure-track positions.  So, I have heaps of opinions about this stuff but I can summarize it in one line, given this job market

• If you do not have a deep curiosity about politics, a PhD in political science is not for you. 

 The PhD is no guarantee of a job, and it does represent a serious opportunity cost (see Farley) in terms of time.  Once you are in a PhD program, it becomes mighty hard to leave as sunk cost logics tend to overcome arguments about exiting.  Having a PhD does open up some interesting alternatives but strangely closes others as one becomes over-qualified in some eyes.  Policy PhDs and academic PhDs are entirely different beasts with only some programs doing a good job of providing people enough of a background in each.  It really is a case of path dependence--you can get off the path, but it has costs.

I do disagree a bit with Joyner who basically says don't go to a school outside the top ten or twenty-five.  Rankings are far from perfect, as I have noted before.  And one can end up doing great in grad school (great idea, great execution, strong pubs)* so that a very good program can be good enough.  But there is a point--that the worse the reputation of a school, the more you are daring the fates.  You can get a great education in a middling program and get a good job, but it is riskier.

* Not referring to me, as I had good idea, good execution and no pubs.  

Grad school is a reasonable choice, if you go in with your eyes open to what opportunities that it may or may not open up.  But there are tradeoffs, so it is not a great idea for those who simply want to delay "real life" a  few years. 

Political Science Joke!

Really. Since I am on vacation (or holiday), I am borrowing a quote that lil Steve quotes in his blog:

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Barack Obama and an independent and pragmatic president beholden to no party, ideology or interest group are walking down the street. At the same time, all four spot a dollar bill on the ground. Who gets the dollar?
Obama, of course. The other three are figments of your imagination.

I am glad some folks are addressing this.  If we get any third party candidates, they are not going to be in the middle, but on the extreme wing of one of the parties, or both.  Things may not be looking good for Obama right now, but why should he be any different?  This time next year, well, it will be interesting to see who folks blame and whether the GOP can put forth a candidate that is not a joke him/herself.

Speaking of the NDP, Forget About Libya

The NDP is opposing renewal of the Libya mission, but I do believe that it will not matter.  Majority government is new to Canada these days, but perhaps the NDP knows it can take an easy position--opposing a military mission for which it has no responsibility.  I do believe the mission will go ahead, no matter what was said a few months ago.  Libya is a good mission for the Harper government--no casualties, Canada plays a leading role via LtGen Bouchard, most other NATO countries are doing far less.  I still doubt that any Canadian troops would ever be deployed, but the air mission is one that Canada can sustain with its relatively small air force for a while longer.

Much Ado About Party Hopping

This piece puts things into perspective as the new leader of the NDP, Nycole Turmel (replacing Jack Layton, who has another cancer battle ahead), was found to have a history of supporting separatist parties in Quebec. 

Party hopping is a Canadian way of life, so this is not so strange.  And as the piece linked above suggests, we ought not be surprised that a left-wing Quebec pol supported the various separatist parties.  The real problem is not so much Turmel's past but the NDP's present--that the pandering during the election made it unclear where the party really stood on the big questions of Canada: what is the role of the federal government during the next referendum?  Yes, there will be another one some day, but will it be a clear question?  Will the NDP support the Clarity Act, which gives Parliament a say, or is it all about 50% plus one? 

I perhaps reacted too quickly on twitter when the news first came out, but I would like to correct for that.  The NDP does have a heap of Quebeckers, but not all of those folks are sovereigntists.  The party itself has an interest in national unity since the NDP would be a marginal party without Quebec.  So, I am not so worried about the NDP so much.  The PQ?  Absolutely.  Their incentives push entirely towards messing things up (as I see it).  Other than collapsing infrastructure, Quebec is doing pretty well with rising property values, growing economy, decent jobs picture, and so on. 

Anyhow, stuff in August is likely to blow over.  I hope so.

Civilian Role in Strategic Debates

I found this piece posted regarding the role of civilians in Aussie military debates.  It does a nice job of arguing why civilian folks might just have both different and valuable perspectives to bring to the table even if their military experience is minimal.  Civilian strategists might not have much to contribute to tactical matters (how to fight a particular battle) and just a bit to operational planning (what the military should be military should be doing this month in Helmand.  But for questions about whether the effort is worthwhile, what are the political consequences at home, in the field and farther afield, how we might evaluate the tradeoffs, and so on, civilian experts provide a valuable perspective.

War is too important to be left to the generals, as Clemenceau apparently said.  True, too many cooks spoil the broth, but good decision-making requires a variety of inputs.  The problem is that any one unit has a distinct culture and shared set of experiences that is likely to limit the diversity of views.  Involving outsiders is a good way to have a check on that.  It does not mean that the civilians are always right, but having to answer their concerns is a good way to force the military to think a bit more about their assumptions. 

Of course, the MacArthurs and Tommy Franks of the world will not listen, but, luckily, not all military leaders are as impervious to insight as these folks are.

It Gets Silly

I was really touched by the It Gets Better campaign.  So, I carefully post this amusing parody.  It is a wonderful imitation of Snape and his take on it getting better.


Even for Snape, it got better.  Sort of.

Whose Afraid of Montreal Tunnels?

Me!  I don't need this article to influence how I drive.  I went south this past weekend and drive west off of the Island even though it meant I then had to drive southeast to dodge the broken bridges and tunnel.

Still, tis a bad sign when a newspaper has to ask the public if they are afraid of the repaired (?) tunnel.  Transport Quebec has uttered lost any of its remaining credibility.  Maybe I should get a boat and make $$ by ferrying people?

Political Science Geek Out Moment of the Week

The New York Times Book Review does a pretty good job of explaining a key concept that I had largely learned by osmosis: Bayesian updating.  How ought we update our beliefs?  I have not read the book that is being reviewed here,"THE THEORY THAT WOULD NOT DIE: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines and Emerged Triumphant From Two Centuries of Controversy" by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, but I should, given how often Bayes comes up in political science.  

The funny thing is that we live in a time where there seems to be no updating--no matter how much evidence is revealed, folks do not seem to be updating and revising their prior beliefs.  Will this book change my mind about this belief?  Um, maybe.

Transition Update

As part of the transition process, NATO handed over responsibility for security to the Afghans a handful of cities and a couple of provinces, including amazingly enough Lashkar Gah, Helmand's capital.  The Brits, who have borne most of the load for Helmand until recently, have a blog suggesting that things are going pretty well:

The violence has not gone away in Lashkar Gah – on Sunday 11 Afghan policemen were killed in a suicide attack – but British military commanders in the city believe despite setbacks real progress has been made.
In six years Lashkar Gah has gone from being Afghanistan’s most violent city to its second wealthiest and thousands are flocking in from the countryside. The real change is Afghans now run Lashkar Gah’s security and international forces have not been called in for a year.
Police corruption is still a concern but not as widespread. The public are now said to be doing what was once unthinkable and reporting crime to the police, a sign that the city may be getting more stable.

It really depends on one's "metrics"--what counts as progress and stability.  Violence?  Still happening.  But if the people are relying on the police, that is huge, given how their starting point and how basic that component of the "rule of law" and security sector is. 

I cannot help but be skeptical since the British military has had a record of being overly positive about Helmand even as things were pretty horrible, not unlike some of the other militaries (Canada) operating in Southern Afghanistan.  It has been only a few weeks, and the bigger news has been the series of assassinations of Karzai appointees.

I have ponder transition a bit further in a forthcoming column at Current Intelligence.

Perils of Modern Research

One of my research assistants had her computer stolen with all of the data that she had been coding for me on it.  Backed up?  Nay.  Despite www.dropbox.com, despite the ease with which one could use an i-pod as a hard drive, nope.  I am paranoid myself precisely because I had a desktop machine stolen from my office (actually, I have had two machines taken from my office).  I remember working on my dissertation twenty years ago (oy!) and making sure I had the stuff on multiple disks in multiple places. 

I didn't think I had to alert 21st century students about the need for backing up.  I was wrong.  So, folks out there who rely on research assistants--remind them that it pays to take care of one's work. 

Collapsing Montreal Infrastructure, part deux

Actually, I don't have much to say.  Today's news is pretty much like yesterday's.  The Transport Ministry is excusing the various problems as being due to the complicated, multi-agency organizational messes that are supposed to oversee the various projects.  As it turns out, the work in the tunnel that preceded (and probably caused) the collapse was not really vetted by the Ministry.  That had been contracted out.  To whom?  To some contractors that were already in trouble for tax evasion.  Good times.

The premier (think governor), Jean Charest, just gave the head of the Transport Ministry, Sam Hamad, a vote of confidence.  If this were a professional sport, that would be the necessary next step before the guy gets fired.  The owner of a team almost always gives a vote of confidence to the general manager, manager, or coach before firing him/her.  If Charest actually keeps Hamad around, Charest then deserves to lose the next election.

To continue the theme from yesterday, the buck stops somewhere--either with Hamad or with Charest.  If Charest does not hold Hamad accountable, then, well, Charest should be.

Pardonnez-moi, Où Va L'argent Arrêter?

I thought maybe the folks in Transport Quebec might understand it better in French, but:

Where does the buck stop?

Apparently not with the Minister.  The latest in Infrastructure Collapsing Watch 2011™ has Transport Minister Sam Hamad blaming the contractors.  That might be believable if this event were not part of a systematic pattern and a systemic breakdown.  Check just today's top stories on the Montreal Gazette's website:

• Which Routes Worry You? 
• Sinkhole closes street in east-central Montreal Note--one of the streets is supposed to be one of the alternatives to the highway that has a collapsing tunnel.  
• Dorval Circle cost soars, work extended:55% increase; Project won't be finished until 2017 Note that this is the main connection between the airport and the city, so the first experience most people will have in Montreal is dysfunctional infrastructure.  Talk about transparency. 
• Champlain Bridge: Motorists beware - major work this weekend. Note that this means that two of the major bridges cannot really used much for folks who want to flee Montreal.  For my summer vacation, this means driving west to leave the island and then drive southeast to get back to the route we need.

The buck should stop with Hamad--that his ministry is UTTERLY FAILING.  Since he has been at the head of this organization as failures in infrastructure, failures in communication, and failures in responses to the infrastructure problems have repeatedly occurred, should he not focus less on the contractors and more on ... himself?  I don't know if there is anyone better to do his job, but can anyone do it worse?  We need at least some symbolic accountability--he needs to get his ass fired or he ought to resign if he has an ounce of conscience.  The last time I saw government so repeatedly and systematically fail to do its job was perhaps in the aftermath of Katrina.  At least, those folks had a huge natural disaster with which to share responsibility. 


Hamad has now agreed to review his ministry to see if it could organize repair work better.  Um, horse, barn, get it.  Fire his ass now!  The buck stops with him.

TV Gets Multinational Warfare Right?!

I have been watching Combat Hospital this summer.  It is a relatively cheesy version of M*A*S*H set in Kandahar, but not as funny.  Perhaps more China Beach-esque.  It is a Canadian series picked up in the US by ABC, hence the more visible role by the Canadian folks. 

The basic idea is that it is a jointly run/personned medical facility in Kandahar in 2006, mostly run by Canadians but also with a smattering of Americans, Brits, Aussies (mostly there to party, it seems), and others.  So, a natural plot would be to show tensions among the Canadians and the Americans, particularly given the shared Canadian sense that Americans are reckless cowboys.

So, I was most interested, given my research on many of the challenges of multilateral operations, to watch last night's episode and see a key plot focused on a rather subtle difference in rules--that the Americans don't seem to mind their helo pilots using "go pills" (amphetamines) when they are drowsy whereas the Canadians would rather rest a weary pilot (see this scene via Hulu, if you can) I have no idea if this is true, but this kind of difference in standard operating procedure is certainly one of the challenges facing any multinational unit, just as each country operating in the skies over Libya has a different targeting process--essentially different rules of engagement--that must be finessed.

As a result of this episode, I can feel as if I was working this summer while watching a decent but not fantastic TV show. 

Tunnel Collapse Update

One of the questions that comes up whenever a Montreal piece of infrastructure collapses (and yes, it does seem to happen often) is: don't they inspect these things?  Yes, yes, they do.  They just don't do anything about it.  The tunnel that collapsed this weekend was found to be in deep trouble three years ago, but nothing was done.  Actually worse than nothing as repairs on the sides of the tunnel, including using high pressure water blasting the sides, may have actually destabilized the ceiling of the tunnel. 

So, we have a two part process: ignore the results when problems are found; go ahead with some efforts to fix but ignore what these efforts might do to the rest of the tunnel.  What this tells us, as if we did not know before, is that there is something deeply and SYSTEMATICALLY wrong with Quebec's political system that allows infrastructure to fall into such a state of disrepair and then the lame efforts to deal with this problem end up causing more problems.  This would be stunning if we were not already stunned already by the previous events and revelations.

The newspapers, including letters to the editor, are clear that we understand that there is no accountability in Quebec.  The transport ministry has tried to cover things in secret sauce by claiming that documents cannot be released as they would affect bidding, or because the civilians would not be able to understand them.  But the larger dynamic is that of nationalist politics.  Elections rarely turn on good governance or its absence but on the nationalist issues of the day, whether it is hating immigrants a few years ago or on separation.  So, politicians are not held accountable for the rubble in the streets, whether the rubble is from collapsing bridges or from World War I battlefield-like potholes. 

While the Parti Quebecois is now criticizing the provincial government for being opaque about this stuff, I have no doubt that they will focus more on how best to get my daughter out of English schools when they come back into power, rather than on fixing the roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.

Can I Love Matt Damon, Too?

I don't like the hairless version, but I do like the idea (even if it is a bit idealistic) that we are not just in it for money:


Of course, we should not be looking to our actors for political advice (that is why we poli sci bloggers are here), but when asked, Matt brings the heat--that it is not just about incentives.  And if we want to talk about incentives, how about we consider the incentives of school administrators?  That might explain why $$/administration tend to rise faster than $$ per student or per teacher/professor.

Anyhow, Sarah Silverman, you may have to stand in line.

Race and Religion

Roger Cohen has a great piece about Racism, inspired by the Oslo murders but based on his experience of growing up in South Africa.  It does raise an issue that may confuse some folks: that racism applies to religious differences.  Or not.

Nothing makes my blood boil like racism. I got a lot of angry mail over a recent column about Norway’s rightist mass murderer and his sympathy with “racist Islamophobia.” Muslims are not a race, the writers claimed.
Funny, several of the angry notes were from Jews, who seemed to have forgotten that not being a race but a religion had scarcely saved Jews from racist persecution: Perhaps the Einsatzgruppen just got in a semantic muddle before opening fire. Perhaps the Malaysian soccer crowd who just booed Chelsea’s Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli player and a Jew, were not really racists. Dream on.

In my career, I have often bumped into labels such as "ethnic and religious politics/conflict" or "ethnic and racial/politics/conflict."  For me, ethnic conflict is a broad category within which race and religion fit, rather than as similar but distinct phenomenon.  Why?  Well, I have always relied on Donald Horowitz's (Joseph Rothschild had a similar one) definition:

Ethnicity is based on a myth of collective ancestry, which usually carries with it traits believed to be innate.” 

The keys here are perception, shared sense of ancestry and associated traits.  Ethnic groups are perceived to exist by members and outsiders as any identity requires a definition of us and them.  What separates ethnicity from class are the ideas of ancestry--that you are born with this particular group membership--and of key traits, such as race, religion, language, and kinship.  Sure, one can adopt a new religion or language more than one can change one's race or kinship, but these traits serve as markers of shared identity and of opposition.  Consequently, the dynamics around race are not especially distinct from those around religion and so on.  We can think about how the differences might matter (linguistic divisions always involve jobs, religious differences are more likely to produce divisions over justice systems, etc), but there are processes, such as outbidding, that are common to all kinds of ethnic identities.

Racism, as used by Cohen, may be a confusing term since it more than just implies race but requires race to be the focal point.  Ethnocentrism or xenophobia might seem more inclusive of the dynamics that Cohen is talking about--how hatred of a particular group, defined by its religion, can lead to assertions of racial differences.  Muslims and Jews are certainly distinct ethnic groups, whose key trait is, indeed, religion, but who are often seen as having racial ties within the group even though, for the most part, race is not really something that unites members of either religious group.  Jews of Eastern European descent see themselves as distinct from those of North African descent.  Muslims come in all colors--and folks in Africa have long seen Arabs as distinct from those with darker skin.

But Cohen is right about the larger point: hating someone for their perceived cultural identity, be it race, religion, language or kinship, is awful and destructive.  Again, I have been delighted over the past few years that my second book suggested that xenophobia might have some positive effects, and I still believe that is the case.  Yet relying on xenophobia to keep irredentist campaigns at bay is a pretty desperate strategy that has negative tradeoffs domestically.  It is abundantly clear to me that where irredentism is not a threat, hatred of others is something that must be opposed.

The Islamophobia that exists in Europe, anti-immigration movement in the US, the opposition to reasonable accommodation in Quebec are all part of the same problematic processes--that some members of privileged ethnic groups are finding themselves in harder times and want to keep their privileges even though they are directly counter to the bases of their political systems and cultures.  The US is a country of immigrants with the obvious exception of the Native Americans, so it is always strange yet predictable to see folks want to close the door behind them.  European countries have equality as a basic part of their DNA, but want things to be less equal for the newcomers.  Quebec is a place where there is a deep memory of being a discriminated minority, but now that Quebeckers have much power locally, much of it is aimed at today's minorities.

The funny thing is that staying true to the core beliefs and values in each of these places is the way out.  Equality of opportunity in the US is the path for immigrants to move up and become part of American society.  Taking care of everyone from cradle to grave is the way ahead for European social democracies.  Canada's multiculturalism is the way to keep the country intact. 

This post started as an effort to clarify some conceptual confusion--that race and religion are similar identities that fit into the larger category of ethnicity--and then moved into arguing about the values of advanced democracies as the way to address these distinctions.  Of course, as a scholar of ethnic conflict, I know that the politics of intra-group competition (ethnic outbidding) and inter-group conflict will dominate, making it hard but not impossible for those who try to build multiethnic coalitions based on the core values of these societies.   It make not require a Mandela or a Martin Luther King, but it sure does help.

Ok, Debt Vote Has One Positive

Gabrielle Giffords votes.  I don't know what her future will be, but I hope she will keep moving people as she did today.

New Blogger on the Block

Erica Chenoweth has a new blog, where she promotes her book on how folks can engage in peaceful dissent rather than violent insurgency.  She is basically teaching people to be annoying.  While I am already an expert in annoying people, I have still learned much.  Check out blog and her book. 

Neo-Luddite!

I am not a luddite, but appreciate a good electronic tale of one:

Driving in Montreal is Like Comedy and Poker

It is all about timing--don't be on a bridge as it collapses, don't be in a tunnel when 15 meter hunks of concrete collapse.  Seriously.  We were not going through that part of the tunnel this weekend (twice) for the comedy festival, as our exit was right before it-where there was yet more construction.  But to get to the other side of downtown--to the TV stations where I did media (when they still cared about Afghanistan), to the distant frisbee fields (before I stopped going to such distant fields because the construction and traffic became too insane), to La Ronde (the Six Flags park), one would have to go through this tunnel.  And to get to downtown itself, there is an earlier tunnel segment right before this exit that is made of the same material--crappy.

The city and province were so lucky that no one was under the concrete when it fell as it is a busy highway.  The sad thing is that no one will hear the alarm bells that this event will ring precisely because they are deaf from all of the other bells already ringing.  Oh yeah, one reason to take this particular road is to get to the one bridge that is more or less okay since the other two major bridges that are on the other side of this tunnel are falling apart.

I rely for worktime commutes on the train system.  And now I will simply avoid driving through downtown unless I absolutely have to do so, as I have no reason to expect that the city and province will provide a durable solution to the collapsing infrastructure.  The big concern is figuring how to get to New York for our summer vacation with the bridges falling apart.  The alternative of going west and then east adds much time, but going on a bridge or through a tunnel as they collapse might mean far less time ... on the planet.

When TV Breaks Your Heart

I finished watching the four season of The Wire last night.  I think my heart is still on the floor, as it was ripped out of my chest.  What a moving, draining, funny, sad, and dynamic depiction of inner city life.  And it all works because it demands the viewers to pay attention and to remember stuff from the first three seasons.  Alan Sepinwall has some very useful re-caps posted--useful because I am watching the show years after it appeared and am not co-watching it. 

The political scientist in me marvels at how much of this show is just the absolutely best depiction of politics--that a politician (Tommy Carcetti) constantly has to face heaps of tradeoffs between competing priorities and between his own ambition and what is best for the city. There are rarely any clear policy choices, and every actor has their own set of incentives to work at cross-purposes--the president of the city council, the governor, the police commissioner, his number two, and everyone else. 

As someone who has watched way too much TV over the past few decades, I can simply say that The Wire is just fantastic and is must-see TV, more than any other program for both its quality and its social relevance.  I have learned so much urban and municipal and bureaucratic politics that I almost wish I could just show this program to my classes for weeks on end.  Instead, I will eventually have to figure out which five minute slice of the five years (once I finish the fifth year) does the best job of showing bureaucratic politics at its best/worst.  I am already thinking of using the discussion between Stringer and Avon about whether one needs to dominate territory in order to do well in the economy of the 21st century for my IR lecture on globalization.

Any other suggestions for using the Wire for IR and/or ethnic conflict classes?

The Real Problem with the US Debt Ceiling Negotiations

I think I have been blogging less the past week because I am so frustrated with the dynamics in US politics.  This whole debt crisis is an artifact of two simple Republican realities: they want to see Obama fail and enough of them refuse to raise taxes to a level where they will be low by historical levels but a bit higher than now.  People argue that famines are not caused by nature but by politics. Well, this common sense famine is definitely the product of politics. 

It should not surprise me since a core theme in my previous work, especially For Kin or Country, is how political incentives will often cause actors to pursue that which is best for their career rather than that which is best for their country (no, I am not the only political scientist with this theme).  But it can still frustrate me. 

I am not going to go into all of the stances taken by everybody.  I just want to acknowledge that this drama has just been depressing, even as it causes the value of my house to increase in exchange rate terms.  Indeed, you know the US is in a crisis when comedians at the Just for Laughs festival make exchange rate jokes that kill (make folks laugh a lot). 

So, if I am blogging less, you can blame Boehner, Cantor, Fox News and other folks who are less interested in what is good for the country but more interested in what is good for themselves.

Unmotivated Xenophobia?

The strange thing about Norway's xenophobia is that the haters are responding to a non-event.  According to this very sharp piece, Muslims make up only a small percentage of the immigrants, with most coming from other Scandinavian and East European countries.  Muslims serve as a convenient target after 9/11, but there is no reality to the fear that Muslim immigrants might have much weight in the political and social systems.  Other countries in the region have seen a bigger flow, so the resentment is easier to understand (not approve, just understand). 

This is not too surprising since extreme right-wing political movements do tend to focus on imagined enemies, such as the UN's black helicopters, but it speaks more to alienation in general rather than on immigration.  We should not say that their choice of stated enemies do not matter, but the problem is not so much immigration, at least in the Norwegian case, but the social and political dynamics that leave folk so outside the political system that they need to blame a pretty small group of immigrants for whatever ails them.

Immigrants are easy to blame and to target, but we should not be distracted by the blame-casting.  Nor should we see this as entirely new and a product of globalization or the internet.  Folks have long used outsiders as scapegoats and right-wing extremism is not new to Norway either.  So, before we focus our attention on that which is new, we might need to consider older, more basic political dynamics (including that the political spectrum is really a circle where the far right and far left merge).

Holy Crisis in Civil-Military Relations

Over the past few months, I have pondered about crises in civil-military relations in Canada and the UK, but events yesterday in Turkey put all of that into perspective:

In the surprising series of events, Turkey’s top commander, Gen. Isik Kosaner, together with the leaders of the navy, army and air force, simultaneously resigned in protest over the sweeping arrests of dozens of generals as suspects in conspiracy investigations that many people in Turkey have come to see as a witch hunt.

The resignations were accepted and the head of the military police was made head of the entire military.  This is very striking as the Turkish military used to be but is clearly no longer a major force in the political system.

But the Turkish political system has gone through profound changes in recent years, and many analysts argued that resigning was the only weapon left in the military’s arsenal. Few people interviewed on Friday thought that a coup was likely, both because Turkey’s democracy now has deep roots and because the military appeared diminished. “Besides this one act, the military doesn’t really have that much left in the tank,” said Steven Cook, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Mr. Cook argued that the resignations also said a great deal about Turkey as a democracy, because its citizens — even those who dislike Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly powerful Justice and Development Party — were no longer willing to accept military rule.

 In a pretty short time, the military has moved from being a legitimate player in the political system, with its willingness to take over seen as normal, to a situation where they accept, even reluctantly, a very intensive investigation and where resignations are the only, ahem, bullet, they have.  The resignations were essentially an attempt to push Erdogan into a corner but he pushed back, demonstrating civilian supremacy.

People may ponder whether an Islamist based party should have this much power, but civilian supremacy over the military is a basic yet often overlooked element of democracy. 

“This was their last resort,” Ms. Aydintasbas said of the resignations. “It is happening precisely because there is no likelihood of a coup. There is nothing else for them to do.”

While these events create heaps  of headlines and some uncertainty, I am pretty sure, despite my general ignorance about Turkish politics, that the inability to threaten a coup is a good thing.  It has been an interesting time in Turkey's extended neighborhood, with the Turkish model being seen as a possible future alternative for Egypt.  Tis model has evolved into a more stable democratic endpoint, which might be a very good thing for the region.

Making Mine Marvel Yet Again

The Spew Family kicked off Spew-fest 2011 (celebrating the origins of the superhero Spew) by going to see Captain America. This has been quite a summer for superhero movies, with a wonderfully cheesy Cap entertaining us while saving the world from the Red Skull and other Nazi folks. 

Beard Me

Why is there a sudden surge of pieces on beard: here and here?  What does my beard say about me?  That I hate shaving mostly.  That, and I don't mind looking older than I am, as my beard went gray a while ago.

The beard — a traditional signifier of age and wisdom in most cultures — had become a symbol of youthful rebellion (and a different sort of conformity) for the first time since the heyday of Fillmore East. In downtown Manhattan, where I live, the beard was de rigueur for young creative professionals.  [NYT]

Really, or are guys just lazy like me?  I am suspicious that this is an invented trend.  Where are the beard stats?  I think we are just noticing the facial hair more, not that we are actually seeing heaps more of it.  But perhaps I am wrong.  Are there more guys with beards these days?  Or just folks who study security and then chat about it on twitter happen to be bearded (that would be Andrew Exum who has been teased by a twitter account that represents his beard)?

Doctor Doctor

I find the appellation of Doctor to be strange, but I am still pretty proud to call my former student Ora Szekely Doctor.  She went from current to former today after defending her dissertation.  Actually, she did not have to defend it as it stood on its own.  It is a fun piece of work, pondering why some non-state violent actors (a.k.a. militias) are more successful than others.  Focusing on the various groups fighting with Israel, she find that a group's strategy of gaining support from domestic and international supporters matters a great deal, and that groups that focus more on marketing themselves do better than those that focus more on coercion or on providing services. 

Even better, she starts teaching in a few weeks at Clark University.  She is not the only student I have supervised to have finished and found a good tenure track position, but she is the most recent ;)  I am bragging here about her not just to take credit for her success but to highlight one of the best parts of this job: spending several years watching someone master the stuff, communicate well and then moving on. 

Of course, this is not the end as I see advising PhD students as a lifetime deal, as these folks will need recommendations and such down the road.  I have finished reading her dissertation, but expect to be seeing a draft or two of her first book.

Supervising graduate students is a lot of work, and it does not end with the school year.  But it can be pretty rewarding.  This day reminds me of the big upside involved in this business.

Entitlement 101

Ok, one short blog rant before I work on the aforementioned grant: mid-summer is not only the time for finishing up various projects but also for students to register for classes at McGill.  Actually, current students can do that in late spring, but new students get their turn now.  My monster intro to IR class of six hundred and twelve is now full, plus the 60 person waiting list.

I say this not just to brag about how wonderfully popular I am, but to set up the frustration.  I am now getting emails from students asking for me to let them into the class as their need to get in is apparently more important than the sixty folks on the waiting list.  Before we had a waiting list system, these emails were understandable.  Getting similar emails for my other class, which is a senior-level class that does fulfill graduation requirements and where the students really do need the class to graduate that term, is understandable.  Still not much I can do since the folks on that waiting list have similar issues.  But for an intro class?  Sorry, but we have another intro class in IR that is more focused on economic stuff that serves as an equally good prerequisite for the other classes.  And there is always next year. 

Of course, I understand that my willingness to teach the huge class means that I accept all that comes with it--the management problems of having a big team of teaching assistants, the ten percent problem (that in any class perhaps 10% of the students cannot follow instructions which means about sixty for this class), the joyful lack of grading I have to do, and so on.  With great power comes great responsibility.  I love teaching the class since the topic is fun to teach and the students have heaps of interest.  So, I really don't mind the negatives that come with a massive class that much.

To be clear, I do love McGill students, who tend to be less entitled than those elsewhere (even if I whine about it again and again).  But I really don't want to be thinking about them until September.  I don't have summers "off", a phrase that drives most profs bonkers, but I do have summers off from undergraduates (graduate students are a year-around joy/plague).

Juggling Too Many Balls

The past few years I have used the metaphor of juggling so many balls that I no longer worry about dropping one or two but tripping on the ones already on the floor.  Hence my blogging has slowed to a crawl this week with multiple deadlines biting me on the butt.  Blogging usually does not take too much time, but Australia-travel-induced sleep problems plus the approaching end of the summer (one month till classes start!) have meant that other stuff has taken priority. 

Which reminds me: read this blog post on readiness and defense spending.  One key part of this is that one makes priorities to figure out what should be the focus and what stuff should either be put off to later or dropped entirely, whether it is weapons systems or academic duties.  Blogging is actually pretty close to the bottom of the list, so excuse me while I work on a grant application for which I am getting repeated nagged by my co-investigators.

Harry Potter and the Romantic Comedy

Again, brain fritzed due to too much driving, so more HP fun instead:


They could have used some of the scenes from Hp6/7.1 where Ginny is pursuing Harry.  Or even Cho-related scenes in HP5.  I did think that one of the best minor things in the 5th movie was how Ginny reacted to the onset of Cho, including how she looked back as the folks were leaving Harry along with Cho just before they kissed.

Harry Potter and the Amazing Adviser

I was kind of stunned to see folks either seriously or mockingly suggest on the Political Science Job Rumor site that the Harry Potter books might have encouraged them to go to grad school, hoping to find a wonderful mentor.  This is a stunning case of confirmation basis (a running Spew theme) if it had any truth to it.  I doubt that it does, but given how foggy I am after driving to and from Ottawa for yet another interview about Canada and Afghanistan (a fascinating interview with a real Mountie about police training and how the police side of things is overseen, compared to other parts of the CA effort in Afghanistan), I will take the easy blog inspiration and run with it (spoilers below).

Ok, Dumbledore was a great mentor to Harry, but he was an exception as far as we can tell with headmaster mostly remaining an administrator.  So, aspiring grad students might think that they are just like Harry.  Doomed?  Oops.  Plus didn't Dumbledore set Harry up to die, kind of?

Perhaps students considered Minerva McGonagall to be their likely adviser.  They must like tough, stern, but fair.  Ok, I guess I can see that.

Potions Prof: Either nasty Snape or status-conscious Slughorn.

But it is the post of Defense Against Dark Arts that should give any aspiring student pause if Hogwarts is what they imagine grad school to be.  Of the six (we shall discount the last year since we do not realy see much of Hogwarts in the seventh book), we get:

• crazy/possessed, 
• incompetent/narcissist, 
• sincere and competent but split personality, 
• quite good but with a hidden agenda, 
• bureaucratic tyrant,
• quite nasty but with a hidden agenda.

So, while we would like to think of Hogwarts as a wonderfully magical place, what we have seen of it provides pretty dismal adviser models.  Perhaps that makes Hogwarts a realistic model after all?

Update: So, of course, this raises the question of which model is your adviser most like?

Grad Student Rap

These guys obviously have way too much time on their hands.  No wonder they have not finished their degree.

Guessing is Guessing

I tried to articulate my take on the uproar over the first assessments about the events in Oslo via twitter, but apparently I had a hard time saying it in 140 characters or less.

We should not be surprised that folks saw multiple attacks creating mass casualties and thought Al-Qaeda.  AQ has developed a reputation for carrying out such attacks, so it is not unreasonable to think AQ in such circumstances.  It is like seeing a flat, mass-produced, mediocre hamburger and thinking McDonalds when there are other producers of such hamburgers.  Thinking AQ when one sees multiple attacks in a country that has been involved in Afghanistan for most of the past ten years is not entirely reasonable.  It was not right this time (it was right on 9/11 to guess AQ), but not unreasonable.  It is one thing to think that all Muslims are terrorists (they are not), but another to think that a big terrorist event might be AQ. 

The problem really is that (a) we tend to speculate with little evidence; and (b) the media wants us to speculate with little evidence.  The new media age means that there are both means and incentives to air one's first thoughts.  The important thing in such circumstances is to be explicit about the guesswork involved--that speculating without facts is exactly that--informed guesswork at best.  Twitter, blogs, facebook, 24 hour networks all transmit reactions to events.  It used to be the case that we didn't have such easy and quick means to share our disinformation, but we could still get some of it on the air one way or another.

I happened to be lucky this time when my first reaction was to think Oklahoma City rather than AQ, but that was mostly about not speculating too quickly rather than thinking that this new terrorist is akin to Timothy McVeigh, which he apparently is.  Well, I was lucky and I was only connected to the net intermittently as I was traveling back from Australia through airports with lousy wifi.  By the time I got to Montreal, the AQ speculation had been crushed by the facts now in hand.

So, the real lesson here is that guesses are guesses, so we need to take them with big grains of salt.  People will always speculate, that is just part of the way we converse and react to things.  Some speculations are "better" than others in how accurate they are.  Some are worse in that they can be based on racism, ethnocentrism, and all the rest.  We just need to remember that all first reactions are exactly that--first and reactions.  More thought and better assessments happen later, not in the moment.

Key Limit to Scholarly Relevance

Dan Drezner has a great post today about how the foreign policy smart set (his phrase) gets so frustrated by domestic politics that they tend to recommend domestic political changes that are never going to happen.

I would go one step further and suggest that one of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible."  I love that phrase.  What is best for policy may not be what is best for politics, and so we may think we have a good idea about what to recommend but get frustrated when our ideas do not get that far. 

Lots of folks talking about early warning about genocide, intervention into civil wars and the like blame "political will."  That countries lack, for whatever reason, the compulsion to act.  Well, that is another way of saying that domestic politics matters, but we don't want to think about it. 

Dan's piece contains an implication which is often false--that IR folks have little grasp of domestic politics.  Many IR folks do tend to ignore or simplify the domestic side too much, but there is plenty of scholarship on the domestic determinants of foreign policy/grand strategy/war/trade/etc.  Plenty of folks look at how domestic institutions and dynamics can cause countries to engage in sub-optimal foreign policies (hence the tradeoff implied in my second book--For Kin or Country). 

The challenge, then, is to figure out what would be a cool policy and how that cool policy could resonate with those who are relevant domestically.  That is not easy, but it is what is necessary.  To be policy relevant requires both parts--articulating a policy alternative that would improve things and some thought about how the alternative could be politically appealing.

Otherwise, we can just dream about the right policy and gnash our teeth when it never happens.

Summer Camp Redux

I have posted before about summer camp, but was reminded today by a ridiculous NYT piece about folks taking private planes to camp (does the NYT have a thing for making camp seem so extravagant) and by a FB status of a friend that today is actually the 35th anniversary of my first day at camp.  Today is the first day of the second four week session at my old camp.  I started in the summer of 1976--yep, the bicentennial year.  I went for four weeks for each of my first couple of years and then entire summers for the rest of my teens (and then some as a counselor).

A friend of mine reacted to the NYT story on FB by pondering whether parents still forced their kids to go to camp.  I had a quick reaction to that, not only because I had so much more fun and, well, self-esteem at camp but also because the next generation seems to be having the same experience.  As I mentioned in the previous post on this topic, I lived for summer as I did not enjoy my school growing up and never felt like I fit in.  At camp, I certainly did, especially as the years went by and as I developed friendships with not only the kids in my age group but also the counselors and administrators that saw me as a fellow lifer.

My daughter has posted a series of videos people made at camp, and it is hard to imagine that there would be that much joy in a similar video made at school.  It is not just the absence of work, but the shared community that makes the difference.  Plus the absence of bullies (at least in the Saideman experiences), the reduced barriers among cliques, and the opportunities for extreme silliness.*

* The night that Sky Lab was due to crash, my unit of 12-13 year olds (five bunks of campers) was having a sleepout in the gym down at the bottom of the hill.  The counselors thought it would be fun to throw pebbles onto the tin roof to make it sound like the pieces of the space station were hitting the camp.  Much chaos ensued, including the throwing of watermelon rinds.  I believe it became known as Rino night, but I could be wrong.   

I guess some folks did not enjoy summer camp, but the repeaters almost always did so.  Sure, for eight-weekers, the seventh week tended to drag (hot Maryland August did not help).  Anyhow, it is pretty easier to fall into a state of nostalgia during the middle of the summer, thinking of great summers long ago, especially as various deadlines start to approach with the new school year.  Where did the summer go?

Sometimes Intuitive Is Enough

Scholars generally seek to come up and prove counter-intuitive arguments. They are sexier, more attention-grabbing and thwart the usual "so what" question.  So, I have enjoyed the past few years the idea that xenophobia has positive qualities, particularly that fear/intolerance of others may serve as a break on irredentism (expanding one's country to include territory inhabited by lost kin).  A pretty jazzy counter-intuitive argument, as far as political science kind of arguments can be thought of as jazzy. 

Events in Oslo remind me that xenophobia is usually seen as negative because hate is inherently bad and leads to bad outcomes.  We know very little about this guy, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed so many, but it does seem to be the case that his personal ideology was one of xenophobia--hating the immigrants coming to Norway and hating Norway for tolerating these foreign folks.  Yes, one can have anti-immigration positions and not choose to kill lots of people, so it probably has a lot more to do with his personal dysfunction than with the "cause" of hating foreigners.  We should not paint all xenophobes with the same brush, as many can just protest and organize politically.

Still, hate is hate, and those who preach hate usually end up either preaching violence or creating an environment where violence seems to be a solution.  I tweeted about Oklahoma City when I first heard of the attack, as I was flying back from Australia and got the news and internet connections intermittently.  I thought of OK City mostly because I screwed up early that day, leading class discussions about it (it was my second year of teaching) and basically assuming it was done by Muslims.  Timothy McVeigh taught me a lesson that day--not to jump too quickly to conclusions.

I do think that McVeigh may have more to teach us about this new event--about the combination of unbalanced loner and a movement to hate others.  There has been a steady rise of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim political movements in Europe (and elsewhere).  This event may have a positive impact in that it may break the momentum, as the radical right fell apart in the US at least for a time after OK city.  At least, I have to hope so.

In some ways, this event reminds me more of Columbine than anything else. That there is a violence outbidding process where each crazed individual must up the stakes to get attention.  Suicide is not enough, killing a few co-workers is not enough, a small bomb is not enough, a shooting spree has been done, so the acts become larger and larger.  I am afraid that we will see more damage done by damaged individuals.  The technology of self/other destruction continues to "improve" so that the next guy will do even more harm. 

Coming back to the Saideman and Ayres book, I should note that we recognize that xenophobia's positive possibilities (deterring aggression) traded off of the negative (domestic discrimination against out-groups).  So, in the Norwegian case, there is no irredentism to be deterred, so xenophobia only has the normal, intuitive, negative consequences that we have long understood.  

Depressing non-counter-intuitive thoughts on a hot summer's weekend.  Time to go to the movies.

Audience Reactions to HP8

NS for those who have not seen the movie or read the books:

Flying Back From Sydney

And we got some significant turbulence over the South Pacific!  Could it be an island with mysterious electromagnetic properties?  Maybe.  So, it is quite suitable that today Lost had its last (maybe) appearance at the Comic-Con (if only I was in grad school at UCSD now!) that this bit of film was shown:


HT to Sepwinall.