Netherlands sabbatical

My wife and I returned from Europe exactly 6 weeks ago today. From January 1 to February 28 I was a Visiting Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, working primarily with Rakhyun Kim. I wrote and then recently revised and completed a fairly long manuscript about climate change politics that is currently under review at an international relations journal. Rak and I completed a shorter related piece in late March that is under review in a more policy-oriented outlet. I will be intentionally vague here until the papers are accepted for publication (hopefully). 

Utrecht University was founded in 1636 and the old parts of the medieval city feature an interesting mix of new and old shops and restaurants on narrow cobblestone streets surrounded by canals ....with lots and lots of bicycles. Downtown under the train station there is a bicycle parking facility that is the world's largest with 13,500 spaces! Nonetheless, we found it to be a great city for walking. The artist who created Miffy was from Utrecht and there is a museum devoted to that (I didn't go). 

Chris and I very much enjoyed our time in the Netherlands and I took hundreds of photos. We purchased a Museum Card that granted entrance to an enormous number of cultural sites, which we visited by taking trains, trams, subways, and buses. The mass transit system is terrific and well-integrated though we did have some trouble with train cancellations a couple of times because of ongoing repair work between Amsterdam and Utrecht. 

In Amsterdam, which we visited many times by train, we were especially pleased by the Rijksmuseum (which has a lot of Rembrandt -- see above) and the Van Gogh Museum. We also learned a good deal of Dutch history at the Anne Frank House, the Resistance Museum, and the National Maritime Museum (Chris skipped that one to devote more time to Resistance). Dutch warships were fighting major battles before the US was born. 

     

I can also recommend highly the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It is filled with major works of art by Dutch masters during the era of Rembrandt and Vermeer. 

We also traveled to Den Bosch for Karnival in a light rain and enjoyed a sunny Saturday in Rotterdam where we visited the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Rotterdam is Europe's largest port and the city was largely rebuilt after being destroyed by bombs in World War II. 

We spent nearly 3 weeks in March in the UK, living in Brighton, the southern coastal town. I'll probably say more about that in a future post. I met with a couple of scholars working at Sussex University and hope that at least one of those meetings leads to productive collaboration sooner or later. 

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Life Updates

This blog has not been the site of much posting for many years -- but this year I have said even less than usual. These days, I am far more likely to post about global politics on BlueSky. I post short film reviews on Letterboxd and Book reviews on Goodreads. Fellow beer drinkers that I know in some way can also connect at Untappd where I have been checking in beers since 2013!

As readers may know, I am in the midst of a full-year sabbatical. I read and reviewed Ronald Kramer's Apocalyptic Crimes: Why Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal and Must Be Abolished. You can find that review here (that's a link to the journal Peace & Change). Soon I expect to post a link to an article that is "in press" on "Evaluating the Resilience of US and Canadian Climate Policy" for American Review of Canadian Studies. I submitted page proof corrections October 30 but the journal has not updated online articles since early October. My contribution was meant to be part of a special issue on Canada-U.S. Environmental Relations and focuses on the Electric Vehicle policies that Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau pursued a few years ago. 

What else?

In October, my wife and I took a short road trip to Indianapolis to see a film at the Heartland International Film Festival which was recently named a top 25 film festival in the world. I imagine we'll find our way back up there again in the future though we only managed to see one movie this year: Hello Out There! We intended to go another evening but the remaining tickets at the venues of interest were less than ideal (front row in small theaters). Next year we'll plan better. HIFF does not really have daytime screenings Monday-Friday. We saw Roofman at a mall while we awaited our film the next night. Coincidentally, both of these films featured actors from the TV series Ted Lasso. 

For unfortunate health reasons, a planned October-November sabbatical visit to the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in The Netherlands had to be postponed until 2026. I'm looking forward to it and my spouse is gradually recovering from an unexpected procedure. I'll post more about the project in the future. 

Meanwhile, I've been revising a conference paper on climate change politics from the Midwest Political Science conference from 2024 and working with Kurt Mills on version 2.0 of our 2020 article on America First and the Human Rights Regime. 

Now anyone who follows me on BlueSky probably has a better understanding of what I've been focusing on these past few months -- lots of climate change and Trump foreign policy -- and actions that seem to threaten American democratic norms and traditions. 


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BISA Conference June 2019

I attended two academic conferences during the summer and did not find time to blog about either. This post will serve as a quick summary of my itinerary and research presentations at the first one of them. Hopefully, I will summarize my time in Hamburg in late August soon in another post.

From June 12-14 I left Dundee for a few days and attended my first British International Studies Association (BISA) conference  in London and I really enjoyed it. For the first two days of the conference, I basically attended panel-after-panel, about four each day. I used to attend a large number of panels at regular ISA meetings, but as I've become more senior in the discipline, I've used my research travel funding to attend smaller workshops focused on specific research projects or to attend more specialized security studies conferences.

Even when I attend ISA these days, I've spent large blocks of conference time meeting with other academics (whether engaged in mutual projects or social functions), talking to publisher representatives in the book rooms, or preparing for discussant duties (reading panel papers often received at the last minute).

I was largely freed from those sorts of responsibilities at BISA as I did not know very many people at the conference, it featured only a very small book room, and I was not assigned any service responsibilities.

The many panels I attended at BISA 2019 were generally of a high level and I look forward to seeing some of the research once it is published. The third day I attended only the morning panels and spent some time in the book rooms as well. I did have one meeting a book publisher and connected with a number of new friends throughout the meeting.

The very first panel I attended reflected the kind of intellectual and identity diversity featured throughout the conference. It focused on a new book that I have not yet read -- The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan. Both authors attended and spoke, though only Buzan was listed in the program.. The panel was chaired by Chris Brown of the London School of Economics and also included Laust Shouenborg (Roskilde University in Denmark), Michael Cox (LSE), Meera Sabaratnam (SOAS), and George Lawson (LSE).

I attended an assortment of panels, mostly chosen by topic; thus, some featured graduate students, others highlighted the work of junior scholars, and still others included prominent European scholars, including Nick Wheeler (University of Birmingham), Ole Wæver (University of Copenhagen), Charlotte Epstein (University of Sydney),

These where the titles of the panel I attended in full:

• The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary 
• Global Leadership in the Future of International Relations 
• Trump and the Liberal International Order
• US relations with the World  
• International Law as an Instrument of Politics: Interpreting, Contesting, and Deploying Legal Norms
• Trump, American Exceptionalism and the International Order (my panel)
• School’s Out? Beyond New Thinking in International Security
• Twists and (Re)Turns: Directions in International Political Theory

Notice any patterns?

I also did a little panel hopping at times in attempt to see some specific presentations of interest. That strategy did not always work -- I would just miss a presentation, or in one case the room was too full to enter.

My presentation was on "An Alliance of the Multilateralists: Practical Necessity or Foolish Fantasy?" It seemed to be generally well-received, though I had proposed this topic earlier this year when I thought Germany and France were going to move forward with their proposed "alliance" at a faster clip. They officially rolled out their Alliance For Multilateralism at the September UN meetings in NY.  Thus, much of my paper explained why they were moving forward and speculated about the kinds of subjects that might be on the agenda going forward.

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Favorites of 2011: technocracy edition

Henry Farrell wrote a great line in his review of David Marquand's The End of the West; The Once and Future Europe (Princeton, 2011) for The Nation (pdf), December 12, 2011:

It is tempting to see the procedures of the EU as a long-term conspiracy to bore the public into submission.

In the next sentences, Farrell retreats a bit from this statement. The institution churns out regulations that Farrell notes are boring and hard to understand, but this result was not produced as a result of top-level secret planning: "The truth is more mundane. Europe’s leaders fell into technocracy by accident rather than design."

One consequence of this reality is the so-called institutional "deficit of democracy" that was met this year by protesters claiming to represent the bottom 99% of us. We'll see in 2012 and beyond if the EU is influenced by their frustration. This EU statement does not seem promising.

Photo credit: Justine (juznie)


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Around the web

Sorry for the silence lately. We traveled for Thanksgiving and I'm really making a push on the book project since the current sabbatical ends in four weeks.

Meanwhile, over at Duck of Minerva, you can read my post from November 30 on "Comprehending Gingrich." Does he have a Belgian pro-colonial worldview?

November 7 on the Duck, I posted "Hans Beinholtz: Europe For Sale." That post is basically a funny Stephen Colbert video about the Euro-crisis.

At the e-IR Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "The US is Not a Climate Outlaw?" on November 21. It is part 2 about my October talk at Cardiff University in Wales.


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IR/Climate blogging

You can find some of my other recent blogging at these websites:

On e-IR, my Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "Is the US a Climate Outlaw?" on October 20. This is part one, which argues that the U.S. can be viewed as an outlaw.

At the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I blogged "War and the Eurozone" on October 28. The post notes some recent striking rhetoric by European conservatives in power.

Also at the Duck, I blogged "Graduation Rates" on October 26. What can we make of the apparent disparity in graduation rates between athletes and the regular student population?


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Ripley; Believe It or Not

I just finished Ripley Under Ground, written by Patricia Highsmith and published in 1970. It's the second novel in a series of five. The first book was creepy, but well-done.

This story was fairly implausible; thus, I read it as a cold war allegory -- published prior to the Pentagon papers (1971) and the Church committee hearings (1975).

Highsmith was simply ahead of her time describing unbelievable tales of American dastardly behavior abroad.

In this book, Ripley, the amoral American-in-residence among Europeans, rides roughshod over the region. His self-interested murders and lies are open secrets among those in his closest circle, even though the public officials he evades cannot nail him for the crimes. While Ripley originally went abroad to seek adventure (and perhaps to provide assistance and earn some cash), he is now a man of leisure living in the shadows off a former victim's inheritance, his own criminal activities, and his European wife's allowance. And his wife knows about many of his past and present misdeeds.


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Profiling the Terrorist Identity

Are you traveling to Europe this summer? Do you think you could spot a terrorist if you saw one? Bet against that.

In June 2007 (I'm still cleaning out my home office), The Atlantic Monthly ran a short piece based on the research of Edwin Bakker of Netherlands Institute of International Relations:

The author profiled 242 European Muslim terrorists nabbed since September 2001: 40 percent of them had been born in Europe; many were poor and had criminal records; almost all were single (or divorced) men; and they ranged widely in age, from their teens to near retirement. But none of these factors distinguished them in any significant way from the broader population of European Muslims.

Basically, as the magazine reported, profiling efforts in Europe are doomed to round up lots of innocent people.

You can read Bakker's latest publication on this topic here (that's a pdf):
"Muslims in the Netherlands: Tensions and Violent Conflict," Tinka Veldhuis & Edwin Bakker, in: Ethno-religious Conflict in Europe: Typologies of Radicalisation in Europe’s Muslim Communities, Michael Emmerson ed. 1 May 2009, pp. 87-114.



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