Friday, June 07, 2013

7 June - The View

English: view of Amecameca with Iztaccihuatl a...English: view of Amecameca with Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl in the background (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
PopocatepetlPopocatepetl (Photo credit: RussBowling)
Volcano Popocatépetl, south side, view from Pa...Volcano Popocatépetl, south side, view from Paso de Cortez Español: Volcán Popocatépetl, lado sur, visto desde el Paso de Cortéz Français : Face sud du volcan Popocatépetl vue de Paso de Cortez (Etat de Puebla, Mexique) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
 
Disinformation
UFO Circles Top Of Mexico’s Popocatepetl Volcano
UFO Circles Top Of Mexico’s Popocatepetl Volcano
disinfo.staging.wpengine.com
A meteor? A jet? Or something else? Captured one week ago, footage of the latest UFO sighting to in the vicinity of 
 

 
Underground News Network via Goo Nies Neverdie
Hacker Who Exposed Steubenville Rape Case Could Spend More Time Behind Bars Than The Rapists
www.alternet.org
How's that for justice?
 
 
 
TED
Telling stories is that thing that makes us human. Today’s TED Radio Hour, called “Framing the Story,” delves into how, and why, we weave narratives.

Listen via NPR: http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/

Listen via iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/npr-ted-radio-hour-podcast/id523121474

Read more: http://wp.me/p10512-k0r
 
Sun Whisperers's video: Prominence Erupts form active region 1764.
Prominence Erupts form active region 1764
Prominence Erupts form active region 1764 The yaw or turning type motion of this video is due to a new 3D technology that allows the video to track the event as it unfolds.
Length: 0:04
Robert Greenwald
Robert Greenwald @robertgreenwald 11s

a very smart and thoughtful piece by don hazen @AlterNet http://goo.gl/tETtq read, ponder and act
The 4 Plagues: Getting a Handle on the Coming Apocalypse
www.alternet.org
In an environment of confusion and despair, it helps to understand the forces at play, how they operate, and why they feel so overwhelming.
Center for Media and Democracy
Those crazy lefties at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve have ranked WI 49 out of 50 in leading economic indicators. This contrasts with the gold star ALEC recently gave the state's economic outlook -- placing it 15th in the nation.
Fed index ranks Wisconsin 49th in economic outlook
www.jsonline.com
Wisconsin ranks 49th in the nation in the most recent index of growth indicators from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton
That's right. He does care.

President Obama is out today touting the Affordable Care Act's success in California, where the insurance exchange is poised to give people some great new affordable health care options: http://on.msnbc.com/13qrX5t

Has Obamacare helped you?
President touts Obamacare’s success in California — MSNBC
tv.msnbc.com
"You can listen to a bunch of political talk out there, negative ads, and fear-mongering geared toward the next election, or alternatively you can look at what's happening in states like California right now," the president said in a speech promoting his health
 
Operation Maple
Our water is not for sale!
http://youtu.be/uw9CkD8Lyak
Water, Water Not For Sale
www.youtube.com
SUBSCRIBE and check out our other videos! http://www.operationmaple.com http://www.facebook.com/operationmaple http://twitter.com/#!/operationmaple
 
Rainforest Action Network and Truthout shared a link.
Obama-Backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Expands Corporate Lawsuits Against Nations for Lost Profits
truth-out.org
The latest negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were recently held behind closed doors in Lima, Peru,
Real Coastal Warriors shared Indian Country Today Media Network's photo.
Three States Debate Water Use as Apalachicola Bay Oyster Harvest Collapses Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/05/three-states-debate-water-use-apalachicola-bay-oyster-harvest-collapses-149735
Three States Debate Water Use as Apalachicola Bay Oyster Harvest Collapses

Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/05/three-states-debate-water-use-apalachicola-bay-oyster-harvest-collapses-149735
 
Nurse Rise ~ Nurses for Safe Water added a new photo.
 
EARTHWORKS
An Australian-owned gold mine in Laos has been polluting a nearby river with toxic chemicals.

One more argument for independent global mining standards to protect communities and the environment. http://bit.ly/13idoiJ
An Australian-owned gold mine in Laos has been polluting a nearby river with toxic chemicals. One more argument for independent global mining standards to protect communities and the environment. http://bit.ly/13idoiJ
 
 
Organic Consumers Association
Frankenfish Can Breed with Wild Trout to Produce Super-Frankenfish

It lends a whole new dimension to the concept of “Supersize Me.” Scientists have determined that AquaBounty Inc.’s “frankenfish,” which is awaiting approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), are capable of breeding with wild trout. And when they do, they produce a fish that grows even faster and bigger than the GE version, according to the study. The supersized hybrid could potentially wipe out wild fish varieties because the smaller, wild fish will have trouble competing for food.

Read More:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27667.cfm
Frankenfish Can Breed with Wild Trout to Produce Super-Frankenfish It lends a whole new dimension to the concept of “Supersize Me.” Scientists have determined that AquaBounty Inc.’s “frankenfish,” which is awaiting approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), are capable of breeding with wild trout. And when they do, they produce a fish that grows even faster and bigger than the GE version, according to the study. The supersized hybrid could potentially wipe out wild fish varieties because the smaller, wild fish will have trouble competing for food. Read More: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27667.cfm
his Is What Democracy Looks Like shared Grow Food, Not Lawns's photo.
I have been trying harder than ever this year to find the sales on organic strawberries, which actually do usually taste better, too.
Conventional Strawberry vs. Organic Strawberry How To Grow An Organic Vegetable Garden: http://goo.gl/X75mB via @[285293641572292:274:The Yardener], @[617594321602794:274:Back to Nature]
Conventional Strawberry vs. Organic Strawberry

How To Grow An Organic Vegetable Garden: http://goo.gl/X75mB

via The Yardener, Back to Nature
 
AA  This article was blocked 4 out of five attempts on a Hawaii State Library Computer. Access was denied on the NaturalNews.com site of which I share information of Facebook. The Topic was Organic Food. The security system of the Stae and perhaps Facebook blocked this site for political reasons, and the site taking a stand against Monsanto, I am sure. The high security of the Hawaii State Library System, ultimately sensored this healthy topic. We are not free nor is our information sharing. The History of Monsanto, and its lawsuits was blocked from being sent to our County Council Members on Facebook and Google.Thersfore, my testimony and the history of Monsanto could not reach the County Council Members who need to know this info before voting on Bill #75 relating to this company, and GMO and poison activities on our island. Pacifka News, Hawaii
Helpful ways to better afford organic food on a tight family budget
www.naturalnews.com
Helpful ways to better afford organic food on a tight family budget
 
Knowledge of Today shared a link.
 
 
Options
Millions Against Monsanto by OrganicConsumers.org
Monsanto’s GMO Wheat Goes Rogue

For years, Monsanto has said “Don’t worry” about their open-air field tests of unapproved genetically engineered (GE) crops. PR flacks and Monsanto-funded scientists all but guaranteed us that the biotech giant’s frankenseeds wouldn’t escape. But they did escape. And now the company’s Roundup-resistant wheat – never approved for planting in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world – has turned up on an Oregon farm.

The discovery of Roundup-resistant wheat in Oregon is troubling. But what’s a whole lot more troubling is that it may just be the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we’re calling on consumers to tell the USDA: No more open-air field testing of unapproved GMO crops!
TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA: No More Field Trials of Unapproved GMO Crops!
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=11113

Read the press release
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27680.cfm
Monsanto’s GMO Wheat Goes Rogue For years, Monsanto has said “Don’t worry” about their open-air field tests of unapproved genetically engineered (GE) crops. PR flacks and Monsanto-funded scientists all but guaranteed us that the biotech giant’s frankenseeds wouldn’t escape. But they did escape. And now the company’s Roundup-resistant wheat – never approved for planting in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world – has turned up on an Oregon farm. The discovery of Roundup-resistant wheat in Oregon is troubling. But what’s a whole lot more troubling is that it may just be the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we’re calling on consumers to tell the USDA: No more open-air field testing of unapproved GMO crops! TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA: No More Field Trials of Unapproved GMO Crops! http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=11113 Read the press release http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27680.cfm
 
Options
Institute for Southern Studies
An editorial in the Charlotte Observer on NC's Moral Monday protests quotes Institute director Chris Kromm about some of the reasons he chose to be arrested for peaceful civil disobedience this week: "We’re running out of options to get our voices heard. If the legislature gets its way, June will bring North Carolina unnecessary voter ID restrictions, fewer early voting days, and the end of our popular judicial public financing program. The impact of these decisions on our democracy cannot be overstated.”
 
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Confirmed: Google's Transparency Report DOES NOT include data about secret FISA court orders

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-about-national-security-letters-google-transparency-report
Google Transparency Report Highlights Just How Much We Don't Know About National Security Letters
www.eff.org
Update 2013-06-07: at the time that we wrote this post, we asked Google whether its Transparency Report included data about secret FISA court orders that would send data 
Real Coastal Warriors shared Occupy Wall St.'s photo.
 
CommonDreams.org
A Democracy Now! segment you don't want to miss:
"A Massive Surveillance State": Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails
www.commondreams.org
The National Security Agency has obtained access to the 
ACLU Nationwide
EMERGENCY ACTION: The NSA can access much of Americans’ digital lives. Take action to stop it.

https://www.aclu.org/secure/repeal-the-surveillance-state?Ms=fb_acluaction_govtspying_130607
EMERGENCY ACTION: The NSA can access much of Americans’ digital lives. Take action to stop it. https://www.aclu.org/secure/repeal-the-surveillance-state?Ms=fb_acluaction_govtspying_130607
 
The Conspiracy Archives and We Are Change shared a link.
General Hayden CIA and NSA Head Confronted
www.youtube.com
SUPPORT THE RESISTANCE http://www.wearechange.org/donate General Michael Hayden runs away after legit questioning about the privacy of Americans citizens, th...
 
a link.
 
 
The Conspiracy Archives
hahahaha and Obama says "Nobody is listening to your phone calls"

Technically, he is not lying...

Except that they are being recorded, stored in databases, and sifted through by multiple super computers to pick out people who say specific key words...

NSA has a Cray supercomputer called "The Black Widow", which sifts through millions of phone calls, texts, emails and internet records each hour.

It will determine who to further investigate based on specific keywords said by the person....
 
1 Billion AGAINST Indefinite Detention without trial law
Liberal-leaning online news show The Young Turks slams Obama, provides in-depth explanation of why his mass surveillance of Americans is profoundly wrong on every level:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1AZHEkmm0g
Options
We Are Change
Look at what a liar NSA head Hayden is when we confronted him on spying on everyone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQTW-58YHgE&sns=em
Mass Blanket Surveillance - Obama is NOT the 'Change' We Believed In
www.youtube.com
"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers 

The Conspiracy Archives
Gunfire echoed through downtown and law enforcement helicopters swooped low among office towers Thursday 6/6/2013, but it was all a drill as the Police Department's counterterrorism unit demonstrated a response to a weapon-of-mass-destruction threat.

The late-morning demonstration began with an explosion of flash grenades, officers firing blank ammunition at pretend suspects, and police rappelling out of a county Sheriff's Department helicopter and onto a hotel bridge on Figueroa Street.

The terror drill was presented as a demonstration for 1,800 attendees of the National Homeland Security Association's conference. Guests from around the world came to marvel at the use of militarized law enforcement.

Scott Dro

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lapd-to-conduct-counterterrorism-drill-in-conjunction-with-homeland-security-conference/2013/06/06/e10094f8-cec9-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/06/06/37605/photos-lapd-holds-weapon-of-mass-destruction-drill/?slide=1
Gunfire echoed through downtown and law enforcement helicopters swooped low among office towers Thursday 6/6/2013, but it was all a drill as the Police Department's counterterrorism unit demonstrated a response to a weapon-of-mass-destruction threat. The late-morning demonstration began with an explosion of flash grenades, officers firing blank ammunition at pretend suspects, and police rappelling out of a county Sheriff's Department helicopter and onto a hotel bridge on Figueroa Street. The terror drill was presented as a demonstration for 1,800 attendees of the National Homeland Security Association's conference. Guests from around the world came to marvel at the use of militarized law enforcement. Scott Dro Sources: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lapd-to-conduct-counterterrorism-drill-in-conjunction-with-homeland-security-conference/2013/06/06/e10094f8-cec9-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/06/06/37605/photos-lapd-holds-weapon-of-mass-destruction-drill/?slide=1
 
enson
The Conspiracy Archives
Debate = Over

(Scott Dro)
Debate = Over (Scott Dro)
 
Bernie Sanders
The Week in Review:

The National Security Agency collected records on tens of millions of innocent telephone and Internet customers in the United States for the past seven years, the Obama administration acknowledged Thursday after The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed details of the classified effort. Sen. Bernie Sanders said authorities need tools to fight real threats by terrorists, but he called for changes in the Patriot Act, a domestic spying bill which he voted against. President Obama defended the surveillance program that he inherited from the Bush administration. “I don’t accept the excuses from the administration,” Sanders told Thom Hartmann on Friday during his weekly radio program. “We expected better from the Obama people.” Also on Friday, the Labor Department reported that unemployment in May was 13.8 percent counting workers forced into part-time jobs and those who fell out of the labor force. With jobs in mind, Sanders on Wednesday spelled out his concerns that an immigration reform bill would cost Americans’ jobs by letting big corporations bring more foreign guest workers to the United States to work for less pay. Overall, the senator stressed, he supports a path to citizenship for 11 million people and their children.

Continue reading here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=E1ADF73A-7CAB-4B9C-8771-57888DB87123
The Week in Review
www.sanders.senate.gov
The National Security Agency collected records on tens of millions of innocent telephone and Internet customers in the United States for the past seven years, the Obama administration acknowledged Thursday after The Guardian 
 
This Is What Democracy Looks Like shared Being Liberal's photo.
Go Senator Sanders. Tell it like it is.
(M) I wish more people were aware of this. Thanks to @[114270361928171:274:Americans Against The Republican Party] for sharing this. Posted on the @[177486166274:274:Being Liberal] fan page.
(M) I wish more people were aware of this. Thanks to Americans Against The Republican Party for sharing this.
 
Bill Moyers
Poor schools underperform largely because of poverty and economic inequality, not because teachers have it too easy, writes David Sirota.
New Data Shows School 'Reformers' Are Getting it Wrong | Perspectives
billmoyers.com
Poor schools underperform largely because of poverty and economic inequality, not because teachers have it too easy.
 
 
 
This Is What Democracy Looks Like shared Amy Roe's photo.
Right on. Love the solar panel signs!
These are awesome protest signs. Phil also made a solar panel sign for the tar sands rally at UD in Sept 2011. Love it.
 
Bridge the Gulf
"To put the size of the pipeline in perspective, the Macondo blowout caused by the explosion of Deepwater Horizon gushed oil at less than half that flow rate. When oil is coursing through Plains Southcorp's 45-mile-long pipeline at maximum capacity, a rupture would result in a spill of 6,250 barrels in one hour."
A high-volume oil pipeline is headed toward Big Creek Lake, and why that's a bad idea (Our view)
www.al.com
A Houston-based company is buying easements to build an oil pipeline from Ten Mile Terminal in Mobile to the Chevron Oil Refinery in Pascagoula, and a portion of their planned route runs right through the watershed draining into Big Creek Lake, Mobile's drinking 

 LS
Im not afraid or embarassed. When I go into wal mart I enter like a wave. I know they can see and feel my light. I grab the greeter and hug him and tell him he is magnificient and great. When waiting at the checkout I ask people if they want to meditate with me while were waiting. I was meditating in the park and some guy walked up to me and asked me if I was ok.
This is PRECISELY how I like to run my page. I have been researching certain subjects for a very, very long time. I realize some of the things I discuss on my page probably seem completely insane to someone who has never come across the information before, but I don't care. I am honest about what I believe because I believe with all my heart that it is the truth. You don't have to agree with me, but I hope you're at least willing to keep an open mind. There are always very good reasons for why I believe what I believe. If you want to learn what the reasons are, all you have to do is ask and I will explain it. If not, feel free to go on believing what you already believe. I respect your right to have a difference in opinion. All I ask is that people extend me the same courtesy.
This is PRECISELY how I like to run my page. I have been researching certain subjects for a very, very long time. I realize some of the things I discuss on my page probably seem completely insane to someone who has never come across the information before, but I don't care. I am honest about what I believe because I believe with all my heart that it is the truth. You don't have to agree with me, but I hope you're at least willing to keep an open mind. There are always very good reasons for why I believe what I believe. If you want to learn what the reasons are, all you have to do is ask and I will explain it. If not, feel free to go on believing what you already believe. I respect your right to have a difference in opinion. All I ask is that people extend me the same courtesy.
 
Southern Poverty Law Center
This major study once again proves that children of same-sex parents are not only doing okay, but they are thriving! LIKE if you agree: kids do best with loving families, and loving families come in all shapes & sizes.

Learn more: http://sp.lc/14FTY71
This major study once again proves that children of same-sex parents are not only doing okay, but they are thriving! LIKE if you agree: kids do best with loving families, and loving families come in all shapes & sizes. Learn more: http://sp.lc/14FTY71
 
edia Matters for America
This week Bill O'Reilly advised that parents punish boys who like the color pink: "...you might have to send him to camp."

VIDEO: http://mm4a.org/13DmsPM
This week Bill O'Reilly advised that parents punish boys who like the color pink: "...you might have to send him to camp." VIDEO: http://mm4a.org/13DmsPM
Salon
If anyone ever tries to tell you white privilege doesn't exist -- just send them this infuriating video...
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
slnm.us
This is one massive reality check, folks.
 
Nesara Australia via Rita Evensen
Every Cancer Can be Cured in Weeks explains Dr. Leonard Coldwell
www.youtube.com
WEBSITE: http://www.ihealthtube.com FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/ihealthtube
a link.
Three-dimensional test simulations of the outer radiation belt electron dynamics including electron-chorus resonant interactions

Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics (1978–2012)

Volume 113, Issue A12, December 2008, Athina Varotsou, Daniel Boscher, Sebastien Bourdarie, Richard B. Horne, Nigel P. Meredith, Sarah A. Glauert and Reiner H. Friedel
Article first published online : 18 DEC 2008, DOI: 10.1029/2007JA012862
 
  1. Neogene to Quaternary broken foreland formation and sedimentation dynamics in the Andes of NW Argentina (25°S)

    Tectonics

    Volume 30, Issue 2, April 2011, M. P. Hain, M. R. Strecker, B. Bookhagen, R. N. Alonso, H. Pingel and A. K. Schmitt
    Article first published online : 16 MAR 2011, DOI: 10.1029/2010TC002703
  2. Weathering reactions and hyporheic exchange controls on stream water chemistry in a glacial meltwater stream in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

    Water Resources Research

    Volume 38, Issue 12, December 2002, Pages: 15-1–15-17, Michael N. Gooseff, Diane M. McKnight, W. Berry Lyons and Alex E. Blum
    Article first published online : 7 DEC 2002, DOI: 10.1029/2001WR000834
 
  1. RECOVERY OF SOIL C AND N IN A TROPICAL PASTURE: PASSIVE AND ACTIVE RESTORATION

    Land Degradation & Development

    L. L. Roa-Fuentes, C. Martínez-Garza, J. Etchevers and J. Campo
    Article first published online : 14 JAN 2013, DOI: 10.1002/ldr.2197
    1. Reduction of lateral pressure propagation due to dissipation into ambient mudrocks during geological carbon dioxide storage

      Water Resources Research

      Kyung Won Chang, Marc A. Hesse and Jean-Philippe Nicot
      Article first published online : 28 MAY 2013, DOI: 10.1002/wrcr.20197
    1. Development and evaluation of a fish-based index to assess biological integrity of Mediterranean streams

      Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems

      Volume 21, Issue 4, June 2011, Pages: 324–337, Enric Aparicio, Gerard Carmona-Catot, Peter B. Moyle and Emili García-Berthou
      Article first published online : 28 JUN 2011, DOI: 10.1002/aqc.1197
    Winter atmospheric circulation and river discharge in northwest Europe

    Geophysical Research Letters

    Volume 33, Issue 6, March 2006, Laurens M. Bouwer, Jan E. Vermaat and Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts
    Article first published online : 21 MAR 2006, DOI: 10.1029/2005GL025548
 dependence on trade influences asymmetric crisis perception. Unilateral crisis perception is more likely to persist when the initiator of the crisis does not depend on trade with the target because in this case the target lacks capability to harm the initiator.( Sanctions )
 

Is Syria Infecting the Middle East?

The Duck catches it for a sloppy proposition...which it appears however that he is mocking.

opit 
In line with the question of sectarian divides and the effects of them : I propose that the experience of Iraq and the targeting of sects by US forces illustrates a dynamic of calculated interference exploiting religion as a disruptive influence. This would explain why Saudi madrassa schools teaching their variant of Islam which considers others 'the enemy' is in fact a perfect counterpoint to Dominionism expropriating old line 'Christian' churches...and even the Bush White House support for extremist right wing Israeli partries in the Knesset ( I recall an article outlining such by a staff writer in Ha'aretz late April 2006; but of course such is behind their paywall )
Related : JAARS and Wycliff Bible translators
North Vietnam comments about missionaries
Bible verses on rifle sights - U.S.
Proselytizing in and by US forces in Afghanistan
Hatemongering in both US and Israeli military training institutions is likely aimed at hampering development of guilt and PTSD - cult style indoctrination by dehumanizing the enemy in the style of WW II propaganda about the Japanese.
WAFF | World's Armed Forces Forum: Former drone operator says ...
Former drone operator says he's haunted by his part in more than 1,600 deaths A former Air Force drone operator
who ... -person glimpse into what its like to control the controversial
machines that have become central to the U.S. effort to kill
terrorists. He says that as an operator he was ... network54.com/Forum/211833/thr......
This puts the Syrian infection in context with identifying the infecting agent : sponsors of al CIAda foreign mercenaries in the styled 'revolution.'
 

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Time to Wind Up a Long-Standing Debate?

    • ProfPTJ • 3 hours ago
      This is an empirical debate? I thought that an empirical debate was a controversy about propositions that could be resolved through the appeal to evidence. This is a pair of absurdly general (and ethically troubling, but that's another issue) claims about world politics which can't possible have (in)validity because they're just ideological or theological posturing. "History is at an end because there are no longer any thinkable alternatives to liberal democracy"? "People are compelled by deep, fundamental values which are incommensurate with values held by other people"? I don't even know how to evaluate either claim, because I don't know how to define the relevant terms (like "value," "civilization," "(the end of) history," etc.).
      This is a category mistake like "Warhol was wrong; Mahler was right." I'd prefer to save the resolution of debates for, you know, actual debates. Not all seemingly-empirical propositions are actually candidates for true/false or valid/invalid. No amount of evidence or argumentation will ever suffice to move a True Believer in either faith, so I'm not sure that it's worth it to engage in the conversation.
      Do people actually "debate" this in policy circles?

  • Discussion on Inside Higher Ed

    Essay urges academe to rethink tenure

    • ProfPTJ • 7 months ago
      The internal tension, perhaps even a flaw, in your argument is the tacit equation of academia with other industries, so that teaching and research become commodities and students become customers. This is, I think, fundamentally wrong; academia is like only one other line of work, the ordained ministry, in that one does it not because one wants to but because one really has no other choice if one wants to lead a full and fulfilling life. It's not for everyone, but for those for who it is, tenure or not-tenure or incentives or not-incentives or whatever makes absolutely no difference: it's a vocation, a calling in the truest sense of the word, and not just a job.
      Hence the broader problem is an environment in which the special distinctiveness of the academy has been lost, the twin aspects of teaching and scholarship have become detached, and forces external to the academy's mission -- principally market forces -- pervade everything, even to the point at which it makes sense to talk about tenure as producing a "moral hazard." Moral hazard only happens if you are dealing with instrumentally rational actors, and academics are pretty much by definition not instrumentally rational actors, otherwise they would have gone into another line of work where they could have made more money and had less Byzantine working conditions.
      So the solution, I think, is to downsize the academy, to shift those training functions that can be most efficiently accomplished through MOOCs and other formats into a separate arena even if it takes place on the same campus, and reserve the sacred (yes, I said "sacred," and I will stand my ground on that) space of the academy for the life of the mind. Tenure is essential to preserving that sacred space, lest we all get too worried about performance expectations and thus focus too little on our thinking and on our efforts, often futile over the short to medium term, to produce spaces for thinking in which our students can sometimes dwell. I think that's worth a few, a very few, doddering oldsters (and I have no doubt that I myself will be one of those one day!) whose glory days as both a scholar and a teacher lie behind them. We owe them at least this much, that they can live out the rest of their days with a little job security. And they are the minority, because even a fading older professor may be just the ticket that a particular student needs to help spark them onto a lifetime of learning.
      PTJ
      2012 U.S. Professor of the Year, District of Columbia

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    The Fallacy of Own-Termism

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      The problem that Dan points to is different, I think, from the interpretive/hermeneutic question of whether our theoretical assumptions accord with the tacit or explicit assumptions of the people we are studying. The indictment of "secular" theories for not being able to grasp religious phenomena -- a charge much like the notion that rational-choice theories can't tell us anything about nationalism because it's "irrational," or the notion that IR theories produced in Western Europe and the United States can't tell us anything about China or Indonesia because those countries are "non-Western" -- puts the cart before the horse and suggests that because the character of some phenomenon is X, theories of that phenomenon  have to also be X. This is a non sequitur. Whether a theory explains something or not has to do with what one thinks that "explanation' is, not what one thinks the phenomenon is. Rational-choice theory isn't barred from explaining "irrational" activities any more than "Western" IR is barred from explaining "non-Western" societies...which isn't to say that these kinds of explanations are necessarily good ones! My point is simply that there is no logical reason why one can't apply any theory to any phenomenon. The results might be meaningless or silly, but one can do it. Hence the criticism is not logically compelling.
      Whether we have to agree with the assumptions made by our subjects in order to understand or explain something is, I think, a slightly different though related problem. The position that we do have to have such agreement seems to be rooted in some notion that knowing human subjects are constitutively different from other entities we might study, so we have to study them differently. In this case the issue is not about the origin or character of the theory, but about the way it approaches human subjects.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Communities and otherness: a typology

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I very much like the way you're expanding the typology here, although I'd make two tweaks. First, I think that durability/evanescence is a separate axis on which actually-existing communities might vary, and I'd want to hold that analytically separate from categorical/non-categorical. Your own examples of an airport vs. routinized interstate diplomacy underscore the point, I think, and also open up another intriguing question: can there be durable non-categorical public space, or will routinization (ugly word; I want to suggest Weber's "veralltäglichung" -- literally, making-everyday, even though it usually gets mangled in translation into "routinization") necessarily tip into a categorical community at some point? Here I'd start thinking of studies of "special relationships" in international politics, and about what happens in crisis situations at airports.
      Second, I would disagree with the claim that "any actor...individual or collective, always belongs to a categorical community, often numerous ones, some overlapping." I'd say instead that any actor always *potentially* belongs to a number of such categorical communities, but at any given time most of them are inactive, latent, tacit. Being a part of a categorical community is not, in my view, about actually sharing something in common with other members of the community; it is about participating in a set of relations (and parenthetically I would not want to draw the relation/transaction line too sharply, especially since any mapping of relations is in my view ideal-typical anyway...and what I think you're picking up here is the durable/evanescent axis) that presumes a common attribute as the basis on which to engage (or, to be Heideggerian for a second, the basis on which to be-for) one another. So the intriguing research question is why some commonalities get selected as the basis for such engagements while others do not, and what kinds of rhetorical gestures including nesting and various modes of collective mobilization are thereby made possible. And the even more intriguing (to my mind, at least) research question is whether a categorical community can be loosened in some way so that it becomes more non-categorical. "Draw the circle wider," indeed.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Which "you"? I think that the relevant processes of determination are likely to be different for participants and for scholars. My post is from a scholar's perspective, and I think it's a fairly easy thing to do to distinguish between a particular relation envisioning a categorical community and a particular relation envisioning a non-categorical community. That "typology of tokens" -- ideal-typical, of course -- is what I sketched in the post. Participants in the relevant relations or communities might not be aware of their location in the typology.
      I don't think that I am looking to make relation the type and community identity a token of that type. I am looking through a typology of relations, and each type of relation has its own kind of associated community identity (categorical vs. non-categorical). The token, I suppose, would be an actual community...which, because the typology is ideal-typical, is not likely to be a token of one or the other type, but a hybrid form. The typology helps us interrogate it by teasing out certain patterns.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I would say that the movement from varelse to raman is an important part of human history over the past few centuries (although how much "unciviized" people were actually related to in a varelse manner is, I would say, more ambiguous than this -- there's an odd kind of recognition-but-not-recognition dynamic, on which I really like Inayatullah ad Blaney's discussion in _International Relations and the Problem of Difference_). The interesting thing is that we keep stopping with one or another categorical definition of the human, even though the basic logic of "human of another species" would seem to incline in the direction of refusing any such bounding of the human. Yes, in practice, we do tend to utilize categories on which to base our relations...but do we have to? That's the thing I am trying to think through here.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I guess I want to stop with your first claim --  "The more like us someone or some group appears to be, the more we treat it as having the same moral and affective traits as we do" -- and suggest that we can invert that order sometimes. The categorical community logic would always want to start with putatively shared attributes, but I am not persuaded that all community needs to start there -- hence the idea of a non-categorical community, a community defined by the ability of its members to participate and not by some trait that they all putatively share. "Human of another species," raman, isn't the same kind of logic as utlanning/framling, so I'm not sure that your claim covers that kind of community.
      Of course, it might also be the case that non-categorical communities are a null set, that all actual communities are to some extent categorical. But the fact that we still *make claims* that purport to go beyond categorical membership strikes me as an interesting and crucial point.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Sounds fascinating --  do send me some references!
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I think that the issue for me is in the potential slippage from the relational level to the individual level. I'm less interested in what people identify with and more interested in how action is framed and legitimated -- so to my mind the issue is not whether Occupy or various Arab uprising groups "are" or "are not" collective actors and more whether there are any socially sustainable claims referencing such actors in evidence. ("Identity" exists intersubjectively -- not like "identification," which is an individual and even subjective phenomenon.) I would tend to agree with you that nothing is created de novo, that nesting claims supervene on previously-circulated commonplaces and nascent identities that exist someplace in the relevant populace, and that deployment itself can serve as a source for future deployment ("we" acted last time, so "we" can do so again). But there's nothing inevitable here, obviously.
      The thing I am trying to capture in the typology is the way that identity claims and relations between members of a community work, and those claims and relations generally aren't particularly temporary or contingent on their own terms. "We, the people...but only until next Tuesday" kind of shoots itself in the foot, rhetorically speaking. Empirically, in actual events, yes, we sometimes see a quick succession of different (and differently-sized, partially overlapping, partially opposing) categorical communities, and I would say that one task of empirical research on a given situation is to figure out how and why that happens; in that case the typology directs us to look for the ways that the categories in question are (provisionally) stabilized. Activation, or deployment, follows logically and often temporally on earlier moments like imagination and dissemination. The other thing that the typology might direct us to do is to look at relations among self-identified community members to get a sense of what kind of community might emerge.
      But in general you're quite correct: the typology is (deliberately) static and fixed. I just don't think that there is any way to analyze the complexity of actual social life in all of its dynamism without such artificial conceptual tools. As long as we remember that they're tools and not representations, I think we're fine.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Bizarre -- that sounds like IR to me.
      To my mind, working through definitions and concepts of community like this is more like a prelude to something publishable I might write later on. In the chapter I reference I only made use of the notion of "human of another species," and didn't really deal with the other ambiguities in the typology. But now that I've wrestled with this a bit, who knows -- maybe it will show up elsewhere, eventually.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Friday Anti-Nerd Blogging: For Those About to Teach!

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Dream Theatre's _Metropolis_ and Genesis' _The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway_ as critical urban studies.  (The edge of prog rock bleeds into metal from time to time.)
      Also, Def Leppard..why didn't you go for the two obvious IR ones, "The Gods of War" and "Die Hard the Hunter"?

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    7 things I don’t like @ being an Academic

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      ...which is THE biggest problem with academia as a profession nowadays.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      For similar reasons, my "Theories of International Politics" course goes Thucydides-to-Hegel, then E. H. Carr, before spending a few weeks on a smattering of contemporary stuff -- largely to see what if anything of the classic themes and questions of political philosophy survives in the post-behaviorist world of US-dominated anglophone IR.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    “Do not try to out-geek the professor”

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      If anyone is interested in taking this course but hasn't signed up yet, do so now, please!
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      It's a good read, and when  I do the full-semester version I typically recommend it. but the really neat stuff in that series comes in the later books, I think, once the Obin show up and we start learning about their backstory.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      The director's cut, of course.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    NSF Blogging

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      "(While it would be, in some respects, interesting to have a natural
      experiment on the impact to Political Science as a discipline if it lost
      NSF funding--which overwhelmingly goes to a particular kind of
      research--no such experiment is worth the loss of the social and
      intellectual goods provided by that money.)"
      I would agree. The actual effects of de-funding outweigh the intriguing opportunity to generate a counterfactual Political Science that was not beholden to the NSF's narrowly neopositivist notion of science, or to the grant money that flows to projects that look to have short-term practical benefits and policy implications rather than to longer-term basic research efforts. This entire effort isn't at all about the philosophical question of what Political Science ought to be; it's a narrowly partisan attempt to appear to be cutting government spending. The fact that the sum total of all of the NSF Political Science grants is a rounding error in the military budget seems not to have figured in that discussion...

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Doctoral Pedagogy on the Theory / Policy Divide

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Good points. My position depends on an idealized separation between scholarship and teaching, even though in the normal course of events both are found together in the single profession of "academic." I would not say that scholarship and teaching are necessarily linked, but by the same token, I would say that teaching can inform and enhance scholarship (and vice versa) in ways that policy/politics doesn't, for the reasons I enumerated in on of my other replies in this thread someplace: neither scholarship not teaching, in my estimation, has much to do with the "consumer of knowledge" subject-position, whereas op-ed writing does.
      Should teaching be part of the scholarly vocation? No. Is it part of the academic profession? I should certainly hope so. Should we teach students to teach as part of doctoral programs? If all doctoral students intended to become academics, yes; then the doctoral degree would be nothing but a professional socialization opportunity for academics. But not all doctoral students in IR intend to become academics -- something that continues to baffle me, but whatever -- so I think that this presents two choices: insist that all doctoral candidates be future academics (and enforce this at admission time), or retrench to that part of the academic profession that doesn't involve teaching, which would be scholarship. In this model, development of doctoral candidates as teachers happens outside the classroom: supervised TAships, teams of people teaching different sections of the same course, eventually one's own course.
      In my ideal world no one would ever go get a PhD who didn't intend to be an academic, PhD programs would be about helping people develop as both scholars and teachers, and this would be so obvious and self-evident that we wouldn't be having a conversation about it ;-) Even in my ideal world I am not certain that graded exercises are the best way to develop good teachers, but that's a practical question rather than a philosophical one.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Making the world a better place is not, I would say, the point of responsible scholarship. That's what politics is for.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Now we're into territory where you and I just basically disagree completely ;-) I don't think we would have better policies if policy-makers adopted scholarly understandings of causal relations, I don't think that the TRIP survey has anything useful to say about this question because the issue is conceptual and philosophical so can't be resolved by a survey, and I think that the only kind of dialogue one might have between these worlds is going to be irremediably marked by two very different purposes to which knowledge is put. So encouraging doctoral candidates to get involved in a non-scholarly world, even a little bit, strikes me as a very dangerous proposition. This is a much longer conversation, probably not best carried out in comments.
      As I've said I have no objection to making such opportunities available. But I have strong objections to making it a required part of doctoral training or a required, for-a-grade part of a doctoral class.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Doctoral Pedagogy on the Theory / Policy Divide

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I think that it is our responsibility to train doctoral students to be scholars, whether they exercise that capacity in the academy or outside of it. I do not think that it is our responsibility to train doctoral students to do things that are not scholarly, although we can certainly afford them opportunities to gain those skills.
      If you're not getting a PhD from a top 20 program and your work isn't US mainstream, it's fortunate that there's a rest of the planet out there where people often do much more interesting scholarship. Sometimes they employ expatriates, and sometimes they provide the scholarly community that is sorely lacking when one is squeezed between op-eds and unreflective neopositivism. And there are also a lot of institutions in the US where one can be hired as a teacher, the traditional partner of the scholarly vocation...
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      A comp properly written is a display of a student's ability to make an argument grounded in the literature, not the kind of "consumption and communication" appropriate to a popular/public forum like FPOnline. Which is why, I think, we don't see many comps essays showing up there, and why people schooled in the writing of comps essays need an intensive editorial retooling in order to write for that forum. Otherwise the translation would be seamless and simultaneous, right?
      I don't think that there is any part of the properly scholarly vocation that involves being a consumer of knowledge, because that misrepresents the status of "knowledge" as something definite, fixed, easily consumable. Lay people might think it's like that, but any of us who regularly hang out backstage know better: the elegant ornament in the crown is made of paper mâché, that apparently-solid building is a facade held together with spit and chewing gum and duct tape, etc. The attitude of knowledge-consumption downplays or ignores the fragile character of our knowledge, because there's no time or space for nuance in that language-game or form of life. Which is why it's not properly scholarly.
      The same might be said of "communication," since the way you are using it implies -- to me, at least -- that a bit of knowledge can be divorced from its circumstances of production and transmitted more or less intact. I disagree. There is no such thing as knowing X divorced from the methodological presuppositions that make it possible to know X in the first place, which is why there is no such thing as "knowledge" in the abstract (unless one means the complex and not always coherent sum total of stuff that we know under various forms of knowing).
      As for interpretation, I would say that good scholarly interpretation requires taking a claim apart to see what makes it tick, and not just reporting the results of some study and spelling out its practical implications...which is a lot of what I see in op-eds.
      Scholarship and politics are different worlds because they are characterized by different language-games underpinned by different forms of life. "Bridging the gap" is a misleading agenda, because in practice it means sacrificing one agenda to the other. I would reject a scholarly politics the same way I reject a political scholarship. Mixing chocolate and peanut butter makes great candy, but it makes poor social science.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Consume-and-communicate is not, I think, what we should be training doctoral students to do. Give them opportunities outside of the classroom to develop those skills if they want to, okay, but make the ability to do something that runs directly contrary to the properly scholarly vocation of knowledge-production count for a part, even a small part, of a grade in a course? That, I think, is the mistake, because what it signals is that this skill-set is part of one's necessary formation as a scholar. Which. It. Is. NOT. People have brilliant scholarly IR careers never writing for Foreign Affairs or FPOnline, never doing a governmental service fellowship, and never participating in discussions with policymakers or NGO activists about strategy and tactics. But they never have brilliant scholarly IR careers without publishing articles and books that use theory and data to make explanatory and/or critical arguments, so that's what we ought to be training doctoral students to do most effectively. It is, as Weber might say, our damned duty.
      You will note that I have, sadly, not mentioned teaching, because people do (unfortunately) have brilliant scholarly IR careers without knowing a damn thing about effective teaching. So by the same logic, I would be opposed to making graded exercises regarding teaching part of a doctoral education. Providing lots of opportunities and support for people to become effective and inspiring teachers, yes, but grading them on their prowess at it? I think that crosses a line.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Of course, this approach presumes translatability. There are, I would say, concepts that cannot be correctly translated into the prosaic language-game of an op-ed without serious intellectual consequences. Part of being bilingual is recognizing when translation (necessarily) fails, too.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I would strongly agree that one should not do this kind of thing in an undergraduate classroom. Having students write punchy essays rather than traditional research papers and then grading those might make sense in some contexts, but as you say, the editorial back-and-forth would not be appropriate for undergraduate classes.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I think it is a mistake to do this as a graded assignment in a doctoral-level course. The attitude towards scholarship one has to adopt when doing this kind of writing -- an attitude I might characterize as "brutally instrumental" or "completely and utterly lacking in nuance" -- is quite contrary to the cultivation of a properly scholarly disposition, which I take to be the point of being a doctoral student to begin with. I would rather encourage students to engage in some properly academic blogging, which means essays rather than op-eds, and to do it outside of class as part of their general scholarly formation. But as a graded exercise I fear that it sends the wrong message, even if one works in class to identify the differences between the language-games. Knowledge is not produced in 750-word op-eds, period. That's called "politics," not "scholarship."

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Ambiguity of “Decision”

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    The Duck of Minerva: Are our courses easier than sleeping?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Please define "good lecture." If you mean something short and punchy like a TED talk, okay, granted. If you mean 60-75 minutes of someone talking at an audience, I think we have something to argue about.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Academic Rigor in the Classroom: Time to Get Serious?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Arnold Wolfers, "Statesmanship and Moral Choice," World Politics 1:2 (January 1949), pp 175-195.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    The Duck of Minerva: Are our courses easier than sleeping?

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Academic Rigor in the Classroom: Time to Get Serious?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Given the situation you describe I am quite skeptical that any one professor or class can make much of an impact on students' learning styles; the outcome you are inhabiting seems grossly overdetermined. Short of a massive overhaul of the whole educational system, I am not entirely sure what to suggest -- and that's not a very helpful suggestion in any case.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Not having the exams looming, I have a lot more flexibility. I never tell students at any level that a piece of reading is necessary to master for them to succeed at anything, partially because I am skeptical of the very notion of "mastering material" and partially because my goal, no matter what I am teaching, is inculcating critical intellectual dispositions. I could not care less whether anyone walks out of one of my classes feeling that they have mastered some material. Encountered, wrestled with, fought through, argued with or against: yes. But "mastered": never.
      I have no idea how well this would play outside of the -- admittedly, extremely privileged -- context of a private college in the United States. But I suspect that it could be done elsewhere in the absence of mandated and parametric constraints like traditional examinations.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Institutional adoption of turnitin.com or some similar service can put a dent in that number.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      There are times, not many, when I thank my lucky stars that I teach in the US. This discussion is one of those times.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      That's fair -- although I am not sure how far "back" to Habermas one can coherently go without buying into "all of his claims and frameworks." Otherwise I think one runs the very real risk of taking the parts of Habermas that one likes out of context, and ignoring the context within which Habermas embeds them. Then again, I'm kind of a purist when it comes to theories and theorists; other people's sensibilities differ on this matter.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Sounds like your university needs to get its head out of the past. That requirement is a pretty serious impediment to any kind of pedagogical or curricular innovation.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Ah, got it. My stumbling-block is "Habermas," because what you describe sounds less to me like the kind of communicative rationality that progressively unearths consensual facts because of everyone's conformity to transcendental standards of rationality, and more like the critical intellectual disposition that Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Dewey, and many feminists like Butler and Harding advocate. I like what you describe and aim for it repeatedly in my courses, but I have rarely found Habermas helpful for those purposes.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      That's a terrible university regulation. Can you get around it by not giving an in-class final, but a take-home essay?
      Instead of response papers, divide the class into small groups or 4-5 students and have each group build and maintain a blog. They talk to one another (build this into your syllabus explicitly as a requirement) and you don't have to comment on everyone's contributions every time.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      The easiest way not to lecture is not to lecture. Walk into the room on day one and explain that you aren't going to lecture, and then stat making use of small group break-out sessions with reporting back to the whole, "fishbowl" conversations in which a small group talks while others watch and then you switch places, simulation exercises, debates, etc. No, no one is expecting it. Which will make it very exciting for all involved!
      "Direct answers to the exam questions" -- well, don't give exams and don't have exam questions...

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Why don’t Korea and Japan Align, even though IR says they should?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      (sorry, that got cut off -- Disqus really doesn't like it when I try to post long-ish comments from my iPad, which is yet another reason why we really ought to get Duck onto WordPress one of these days...)
      To finish my point: Robust regional cooperation is not driven by interests or beliefs or
      perceptions or "objective" similarities between the parties
      involved, but by the availability of a commonplace set of cultural and rhetorical resources on which actors can draw in order to legitimate their common activities or their activities on behalf of the greater whole. This is not an argument about causal necessity, though, because commonplace resources are always only conditions of possibility rather than efficient causal factors; my argument here is both theoretically relationalist and methodologically non-neopositivist. Which is important, since the "big three" IR approaches (which are not paradigms, grr, how many times do we have to keep killing that hydra before it stays dead? ;-)) as you have articulated them are all neopositivist "X causes Y in general, given appropriate scope and domain considerations" claims. So the real solution here may be to theorize differently, abandon nomothetic generalization, and concentrate on the specific trajectories and ecologies of different kinds of international actions. Katzenstein's recent trilogy of edited volumes (full disclosure, I'm in the first one) is a good illustration of what this kind of approach might mean in practice.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Academic Rigor in the Classroom: Time to Get Serious?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      And FYI I am not going as Ensign Expendable to ISA 2013 ;-) Maybe that's Dan.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      "40 pages of reading per course per week." Hmpf. Last time I looked, _Dune_ is like 600 pages depending on the edition, and that PLUS a Weber essay are one week of my regular-semester sci-fi course. I can't quite fathom assigning less than 40 pages for a week of a college-level class (in my syllabi a "light" week for an undergraduate course is 2 academic articles from professional journals); where are the people who get away with stuff like this, and how are they still employed in the academy?

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Ambiguity of “Decision”

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      As I have sometimes said in other contexts, the fact that all social outcomes/arrangements are and involve people doing stuff is a "hardware" issue, and we social scientists are, pretty much by definition, interested in "software." Not that there aren't hardware issues that matter in the world, and not that software means fluffy ideational nonsense, but I find the basic distinction -- understood as an analytical prosthetic, not as a claim of fundamental ontology -- a useful one.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    What’s So ‘Institutional’ @ Historical Institutionalism?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Started a reply but it got long enough to be its own post. See above.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Theoretical incoherence, or the result of having both a rational choice theorist and a historically-inclined person on one's committee? ;-)
      More seriously: to me what you've just described sounds like two studies, or two parallel investigations into different aspects of an event: its historical conditions of possibility, and the motives of the individuals who built it. These in turn answer different questions, draw on different conceptual toolkits (which might even be in tension with one another, since each would insist that the "findings" of the other be reduced to its own terms), and foreground different implications. So the first question I would ask that that hypothetical job talk would be: "why did you do two projects instead of just one?"
      The theoretical bet of each of those modes of analysis is that they are sufficient to account for some observed outcome, so combining them either gives you parallelism or -- and I would say that that this is almost always the case in contemporary IR work that speaks of "bridging the gap" or "synthesizing" -- in practice one of the two accounts acts as a set of inputs or data for the other, which is the real heart of the causal argument. (And it's usually the rationalist approach which is the core of the resulting account.) This is the Jeff Legro / Frank Schimmelfennig approach to combining rational and historical-institutional (although they say "constructivist," but that's another post altogether) analyses, in which the historical-institutional stuff simply provides the menu of options from which the more or less rational actors choose. One of the two accounts is, to borrow Ted Hopf's brilliant line for a moment, the senior partner, and one of them is the summer intern. And under those circumstances I'd much rather that the account not pretend to be more pluralist than it is, but that it declare explicitly where it is placing its explanatory bets.
      I would rather have self-aware partiality than inconsistent attempts at comprehensiveness. Commitments have to be made, theoretically as well as methodologically, because not everything fits together neatly.
      Or I could be wrong, and you might have a very compelling reason why the combination you are using makes sense in this case. If so I would love to hear it.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      "Rational choice institutionalism" is a contradiction in terms, because the "institution" disappears into a morass of self-interested rational calculations. "Sociological institutionalism" is redundant, because if social life weren't organized into institutions (although not necessarily organizations -- think of the institution of marriage, the Sociology 101 textbook example) it would be impossible to study at all systematically without reducing it to individual decisions...which would put us back in rational-choice land, which, as I said, has no meaningful institutions, just epiphenomenal temporary equilibria. "Historical institutionalism," I think, is the kind of term that one only has to use in a field as decidedly a-historical as US IR, in order to remind the reader that the explanatory logic in question derives from the historical roots of a given institution.
      None of this is about what we look at. It is about how we explain things. To say "institution" is to make a claim of scientific ontology: in our bestiary, we have these relatively stable patterns of action that come with socially-established (although not necessarily constant or consistent) meanings, and we don't have to perpetually reduce those to rational calculations made by putatively autonomous individuals -- we can just start with the institutions and proceed from there. To treat the Cold War as an institution, or in institutional terms, is to adopt a very different perspective on things than if one treated it as the consequence of rational foreign policy decisions undertaken under conditions of bipolarity. Unfortunately, individualist reductionism is overdetermined in US IR, so we often have a hard time not collapsing social arrangements back into individual decisions and behaviors. If the term "institution" helps remind us not to do that, then I think it does some good work, even if it does deviate from the ordinary-language meaning of "institution" which is pretty much synonymous with "organization."

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Two certification systems

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I agree that there's more than top-tier publications involved, but those help. The "global IR directory" project I hope to be launching soon will, I believe, flesh out some of those networks of professional training and certification in greater detail.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Interstellar Relations: A New Old Course At Georgetown

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Some of this is personal preference, and some of this is population-specific, but in my experience the focused approach reassures students about what they are getting themselves into.
      I like "sci-fi as systematic counterfactuals." But then I'd basically drop all of the stuff that is designed to get students to see parallels between sci-fi works and IR theory, and instead treat the sci-fi novels and films as theories themselves.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I guess the thing that leaps out to me is that this is a pretty scattershot course -- which has its advantages, such as the fact that you can cover a lot of stuff! -- and I am not sure what holds the pieces together. Your introductory framing paragraph seems to forecast three themes: sci-fi and polisci as engaged in a process of counterfactual reasoning; sci-fi as representing polisci theories; and sci-fi as representing/contributing to contemporary political debates. To me that looks like three courses, and the readings one would assign are different for each course. For example, I am not sure quite what you are getting at in the "War, the State, and Man" sessions: sci-fi authors sometimes sound like Waltz? Sci-fi authors have different takes on the relationship between war and human nature? (And why is Alas Babylon there?)
      Some of this is aesthetic/pedagogical preference: I like courses that have a tight unfolding of themes over time, as opposed to "here's alot of really frakking great stuff, let's talk about it" -- which is, I am fully aware, how some people prefer to teach and some students prefer to learn. Some of it is the fact that I am not quite sure what you want students to get out of the class. And some of it is that I think you're glossing over an important distinction between sci-fi as vehicle for delivering IR/polisci content, and sci-fi *as* IR/polisci content. For my money, noting the IR theory parallels in BSG or whatever is an intriguing parlor game, but I don't think it's the best use of this rich material. So my advice would be to design a course that makes it more and more difficult to be satisfied with "ooh, look, Dune has some parallels with theories about resource competition!" or that kind of thing.
      Our courses may run in parallel in DC this summer. When are you teaching? Maybe we can do a joint session.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Interstellar Relations: A New Old Course At Georgetown

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      Star Wars is also not science fiction. To teach Star Wars one needs to do a lot more with myth-as-genre.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    Winceoff vs. Nexon Cage Match!

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I have been teaching in DC for 12 years and *I* don't make a 6-figure salary. Fortunately I am not in this for the money -- not that you are, but personally, I think I would have to shoot myself if I were working in a job that drew on my "stats software training" and "substantive knowledge" regardless of the salary it came with. Academia is a vocation with teaching at its heart. The fact that our graduate training in Political Science (and not just there, sadly) seems to have forgotten this key fact long ago is, I think, the bigger tragedy underpinning or overshadowing this entire discussion.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      And I would agree with this as a description of the situation (although the rise of significant employment for PhDs in Political Science outside of the academy is, I would say, a relative recent phenomenon). I disagree with the implication, or the conclusion, that what we should do is suck it up and toe the line. Here I am disagreeing with the implications of Dan's argument too: I never advise any of my students to make sure that they toss in some statistical analysis as an additional chapter in their dissertations unless it actually helps them answer their research question, which for virtually all of my students it does not (part of why they are my students, why they sought me out as a supervisor in the first place -- and just FYI, many of them now have academic jobs). There is a limit to how far one ought to confirm to the fashionable demands of the discipline, but -- and here KW and Dan are both entirely correct -- this can come with costs which people ought to be cognizant of.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      The problem, though, is that very few people learn how to continue their self-training. "Overprofessionalization" is part of the problem: what people seem to learn in graduate school is how to do what is expected to get a job and then to get tenure. None of which rewards serious study in the philosophy of social science, at least not in the US. That said, I couldn't agree more that we need more of that sort of study; hence my C of I book, as a contribution to what I think is a more adequate vocabulary in which to have these contentious conversations.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      It may not take a philosophical commitment to understand what a Gaussian distribution is, but it takes a philosophical commitment to consider it relevant. Ditto discourse analysis. Methods are portable; methodologies are not.
      In defense of the theorist to whom you spoke, what she should have said is that "greatly improved" is a methodological matter involving the epistemic status of one's claims, and if one is not interested in nomothetic generalization, it is arguable that descriptive statistics would not do anything to "greatly improve" the research. There is more than one way to identify a problem as a problem, after all.
      There may be more places where neopositivist social science is valued, but would one actually want to work there? Without what Weber might call the "inner feeling" for one's work, I suspect it would be torture. If you actually have a commitment to neopositivism, more power to you, go forth and hypothesis-test boldly. If not, well, I detect tragedy.
      The only way that grad school as something less than the full menu of options makes sense to me is if students have better knowledge about what they are choosing by electing to go to particular PhD programs. Rochester makes no secret of the fact that its students are trained to do particular things and not others; I respect that kind of truth in advertising. What drives me to distraction is the failure to even acknowledge the existence of other ways of proceeding, or -- perhaps even worse -- to assume that all ways of proceeding are ultimately reconcilable with neopositivism (call this "Laitin-pluralism," and note that it is not pluralist at all when it comes to anything that matters philosophically or methodologically).
      In my experience, over a long career one has the opportunity to misunderstand novel approaches as reflections of one's own basic assumptions, but rare indeed is the scholar who actually retools in any fundamental way. There's some path-dependency to early methodological choices, and -- I would say -- even moreso to the question of whether one is initially socialized with a pluralist sensibility or into a monoculture. I have known very few scholars to move from the latter to the former -- except for the Laitin/Keohane faux pluralism of "everyone can play my game, since my game is the only game in town -- and surprise, it's neopositivist hypothesis-testing."
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I do disagree that the examples of what you called "important knowledge" are only important to a neopositivist -- and that's okay, as long as one doesn't claim them to have universal relevance. Notions like "Gaussian distribution" and "real-world variable" are only comprehensible and compelling within a very specific set of philosophical commitments -- a point I despair of ever communicating to those neopositivists who seem to think that "selection bias" is a problem for a research design that isn't aiming to produce nomothetic generalizations. A little philosophy of science goes along way in discussions like that.
      I would contest your assertion that there are no jobs out there for people who don't do neopositivist work, or at least I would amend it to: there are very few, perhaps almost no, jobs out there in highly prestigious institutions in the US in Political Science departments for people who do not neopositivist work on world politics, because IR in the US is largely set up as a subfield of US Political Science. But there are a lot of institutions that aren't so prestigious by the conventional measures of prestige involving the admonition of other prestigious institutions (the circularity is important here), and an increasing number of programs in International or Global Studies that aren't Political Science subunits. Plus there's a rest of the planet out there. The dominance of neopositivism in US IR does not mean the dominance of neopositivism in IR writ large(r), and it does not mean the complete elimination of alternatives.
      My objection is and has always been to the forced constraint generated by a methodological monoculture of neopositivism, as though the "alternatives" were large-n, small-n, and "mixed methods." These are not alternatives in a methodological sense. Graduate training ought to provide students with a broader menu of options than just various flavors of neopositivism, lest there be a lock-in effect whereby neopositivist standards and practices become the de facto baseline against which other ways of producing knowledge are evaluated. That it doesn't so often in the US is, I would say, tragic.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      "More importantly, I don't think that learning a bunch of methods closed
      off avenues of research for me; on the contrary, it opened them up!
      Learning that not every real-world variable has a Gaussian distribution,
      that assumptions regarding the data-generating process are very
      important, that (yes) not every process in the world is linear, that
      bias can come in all shapes and sizes (regardless of what method one
      uses, and I don't just mean quant here)... this is important knowledge
      to possess!"
      If you're a neopositivist, yes. What's sad to me is that Winecoff doesn't appear to acknowledge anything but neopositivism as a legitimate approach to social-scientific inquiry. And that may be the most depressing implication of the overprofessionalization I still think you are quite right to decry.

  • Discussion on Duck of Minerva

    The Future of Teaching?

    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I think of most panels as an excuse for academics to get together in the bar afterwards.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      I rather like group blogs, myself. I set some pretty strict FB boundaries between me and my undergraduate students: I won't friend them, etc. I'm fearful of the appearance of bias, especially since I have part-time university admin responsibilities...and frankly I don't need to be privy to the conversations my students are having via their FB pages ;-) For me, group blogs do much the same thing as Colin describes. And yes, strict rules about frequency and relevance of posts are a must, to keep everyone on track.
    • ProfPTJ • a year ago
      There's a fine line between gatekeeping and signposting. As far as I know, a blog can't keep things out of circulation, but a journal review and editorial process can.
 
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