I just created a new blog, and to celebrate I'm doing something I've never done here, creating a proper introduction! I'm a 20 something American #trans woman who's currently researching #polisci and studying #cybersecurity.

I'm very passionate about #politics (I don't know exactly where I land, but somewhere on the far left lol). I've been trying to help build a strong local community where I'm at. Organization & community is one of the best defenses against fascism! As is direct action!

I also really love music, esspecially hiphop. My favorite artists right now are, in no particular order, #Doechii, #SZA, #KendrickLamar, #BillyWoods, #KaliUchis, and #LittleSimz.

https://pirategoddess.net/blog/introduction/

#introduction

"Well, I anticipated a lot of what would happen if Trump were reelected, but I did not anticipate the quick acquiescence of almost every American elite sector. The universities are part of a larger story. In many ways, it started with law firms — or you could say it started with the fact that we no longer have corporations so much as we have megalomaniacal multibillionaire tech bros who operate as individuals — sycophants trying to buy their way in. Musk is the most obvious, but they’re all that way right now. They’re inescapable because they control huge sectors of internet-enabled stuff that everybody needs. In some ways, Musk is the most vulnerable because of Tesla.

The universities are not an exemplary story of collective action, but they’re not as bad as the other elite institutions. I want to be careful here because I’m not sure we know how much informal coordination has been going on among university leaders. Obviously, there has not been a big public thing. That would be very difficult to do — there are so many colleges and universities, and even so many fairly important ones. They’re divided between the overly rich private universities and the major public universities and university systems. This is where Harvard was very important. I think Harvard, like everybody else, wanted to find a way to make a deal, because what nobody anticipated — and I think it’s fair to say that nobody did — was the attack on overhead and the attack on scientific research.

That, along with the attack on international students, could destroy these institutions. University administrators in our era are not profiles in courage. They are picked to go along to get along. They’re also picked for courting donors."

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/23285/20740

#Sociology #PoliticalScience #PoliSci #USA #HigherEd #Universities #Trump

What happens when you hear phrases like "clash of civilizations" used unironically?

#polls #history #geopolitics #polisci

Fediverse, there was an incredible interview in the New Yorker, Nov 17, 2022, with John Mearsheimer, an international relations scholar from the Realist tradition. In this interview, Mearsheimer continues to defend his assertion that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a natural response to Western aggression and not Russian imperialism, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Further, he gets weirdly defensive about his meeting with white nationalist and autocrat Viktor Orban.

But now I don't have access to it! I really want to assign it to my class, but the college doesn't have this issue. Does anyone have a free/pdf version of this article?

#academia #AcademicMastodon #polisci #PoliticalScience #International #InternationalRelations #ForeignAffairs #Russia #Ukraine #NATO

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/john-mearsheimer-on-putins-ambitions-after-nine-months-of-war