Inbar Talk and Review

I am happy to report that today’s talk by Efraim Inbar at the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies went very well. It was attended by a healthy cross-section of the campus community as well as several Chicago locals. The talk itself was quite interesting, largely following the lines of his paper, “The Rise and Demise of the Two-State Paradigm,” and sparked a vigorous conversation among the participants.

Thankfully, my role as discussant also seemed to be well received. For everyone unable to attend, I am posting below my written response to Inbar’s article. As always, your thoughts, comments, and criticisms are welcome.

The Rise and Demise of the Two-State Paradigm

Next week should be an interesting one here at Northwestern. Efraim Inbar, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University and the director of Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, will be speaking next Wednesday, January 27, about research related to his recent article in Orbis, “The Rise and Demise of the Two-State Paradigm.”

The event is being put on by the Buffett Center’s Working Group on Security Studies, chaired by Hendrik Spruyt and Jonathan Caverley. They have asked me to serve as a discussant for the event, so I have slowly been putting together a thoughtful response to the piece. I’ll post a version of it here following the event on Wednesday. Serious compliments to my friend Olivier Henripen, research assistant for the working group, who has done a ton of work to put on this event and others in the series!

In the meantime, I highly recommend taking a look at his paper. While his argument has some serious conceptual problems, it is one of the better recent papers that have challenged the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can download a copy here.

An Academic Book Wish List

While plowing through grant proposals, I have come across a number of books that have been released in the past year that I really must read.

Authors most relevant to my dissertation work including Stacie Goddard, Ron Hassner, and Anthony Smith have all written new books that speak to questions of the origins of national identity and the role of nationalism in international territorial conflict.

Also a number of special interest books have been released this year including controversial Israeli historian Benny Morris’s One State, Two States, his latest take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, which has kicked up its share of sand in Israel and elsewhere.

 

If any of these were to magically appear on my doorstep, I would be a very happy camper.

Quick Update

It was pointed out to me recently that I have failed to post anything to this site since October 5, so a brief update is in order:

The Fall Quarter at Northwestern has just ended as has my time as a TA for Jim Mahoney’s Political Science 310: Methods of Political Inference course. I am happy to report that, although the class was quite challenging, my students really pulled out all stops in the end and did quite well in their final papers and exams. Congratulations to all. Next quarter, I will be TAing for Wendy Pearlman’s Political Science 390: Middle East Politics course and continuing my work with the Northwestern Middle East Forum.

Over the break, I will be continuing work on grants to secure funding for future fieldwork. Thanks to ongoing assistance from the staff at the Northwestern Office of Fellowships and my dedicated dissertation committee, I managed to complete both the Fulbright IIE and Fulbright Hays grants. I am now engaged in writing the United States Institute for Peace’s Jennings Randolph Peace Scholarship Dissertation Program application. I will also be moving ahead with writing a paper based on my fieldwork in the summer in Serbia.

With any luck, it will be a very productive month. Thank you as always for reading.

Dinosaur Comics and Concept Building

This week in Jim Mahoney’s Political Science 310: Methods of Political Inference course, we are exploring the formulation of concepts for qualitative research.

To make my TA sections a bit more interesting, I am having my students this week explore the ladder of generality, methods of analytical differentiation, and concept stretching in part through an analysis of this episode of Dinosaur Comics: 

1. How are T-Rex’s thoughts on sandwichocracy related to the ladder of generality?
2. What forms of analytical differentiation are T-Rex, Utahraptor, and Dromiceiomimus employing in their concept-building exercise?
3. Do they raise any concerns with regard to conceptual stretching?

Please discuss. I am eternally grateful to my friend and colleague, Mitch Troup, who introduced me to this delightful comic

WordPress Tags: political inference, qualitative methods, dinosaur comics, sandwichocracy

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Paper Accepted for ISA 2010 in New Orleans

I am happy to report that my paper-in-progress, “Kosovo is Serbia”: Nation and Homeland in Contentious Territorial Politics, has been accepted for next year’s International Studies Association annual conference.

The conference will be held in New Orleans from February 17 through February 20, 2010 at the Hilton Riverside Hotel. My panel, “Building Nations,” will take place on Saturday, February 20, at 8:30 am. Much to my surprise, I have also been assigned to chair the panel! This will be a first for me so if anyone has any pointers on how to do this job well, please pass them along!

For your reading pleasure, I have attached the paper abstract after the jump. Enjoy and, as always, feedback is greatly appreciated:

L’Shana Tova 5770

This evening marks the beginning of the Jewish observance of  Rosh Hashana, the 5770th year since creation according to a literal reading of the Torah (we don’t actually believe that the universe is less than 6000 years old, but this is another discussion).

This is a time of year when Jews reflect back on their accomplishments and failures of the past year, ask for forgiveness for wrongs they have committed against others, and look forward to a new year with a clean conscience and a determination to make the world a better place. This past year has certainly been a challenging one for me, but I am proud of what I have accomplished. Between renewing my personal life and working hard to move my academic program forward at Northwestern, I can point to many successes.

Fulbright IIE Round One

After seven or so drafts and many many hours of work, I have finally submitted my Fulbright IIE grant application in time for Northwestern’s internal deadline: yesterday. Now my application will be reviewed by internal committees for further comment and criticism so I can rewrite it another six times before the national deadline. The process is a bit exhausting, but incredibly helpful.

A huge thank you to my recommenders, Will Reno, Hendrik Spruyt, and Ed Gibson, for your timely letters, and to Edna Grad for her Hebrew language evaluation. Also to my Fulbright Faculty Advisor, Yohanan Ptrovsky-Shtern for his insightful thoughts on my application essays as well as to Steve Hill and Brad Zakarin for their input and help with the application process.

I am also happy to report that both Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan and Hebrew University in Jerusalem have agreed to serve as my affiliate institutions in the 2010-2011 academic year, assuming I receive the Fulbright. Thank you to professors Jonathan Fox and Dan Miodownik for your incredibly quick turn around on my required letters.

Because the grant is still “in production,” I am not going to post either my Statement of Proposed Research or Personal Statement for reader review just yet. However, if you are dying to take a look at it, let me know and I can send them to you by e-mail. Wish me luck. I need it!

WordPress Tags: fulbright iie, grant writing, northwestern university, hebrew university, bar ilan university, israel

Moving and Not Writing

Hi folks, a number of my friends have pointed out that I have been slacking on my blog as of late. While procrastination should need no excuse, it seems that I owe you all an explanation. Allow me to provide several:

1. I am back in Chicago so my fieldwork is finished for the summer. This means fewer interesting stories, interviews, and travels for awhile
2. I have just moved. I have spent the last two weeks packing up my old apartment in Evanston and relocating to my new place in Lincoln Park. Thank you to Lina, Peter, and Dima without whom the move would not have been possible! I will likely be spending the next week cleaning the old place so my generous landlord of the past three years is not left with that thankless task.
3. Classes do not start again until the end of September. This means that I do not have a lot of important university news to announce either.

In short, things have slowed down quite a bit for the remainder of the summer. As I get back to work on my Fulbright IIE application next week, I may post some written material up for comment. In the meantime, you should all visit a new blog, Religio-N-Politics, written by my friend and colleague Nukhet Sandal. She is a senior Ph.D. candidate at USC whom I met last year at ISA in New York. Her specific area of scholarship is international relations and religion, a very hot topic these days. Check it out!

WordPress Tags: chicago, lincoln park, fulbright iie, nukhet sandal, religio-n-politics

Day 37: Flying Home and Thank You Serbia

Wednesday evening I arrived home to Chicago safe and sound. There was some drama along the way, but it clearly all turned out for the best. Here is more or less what happened on the way.

I left Manga at about 8:45 in the morning to catch the Jat bus from Slavija to Nikola Tesla International Airport. I got on the shuttle just as it was leaving but arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. A warning to travelers, the airport is the biggest tourist trap in the whole of the country. Once passing through security, you will be confronted with a long string of overpriced duty free shops and restaurants. The gates, which each require another security check for international departures, are not announced until an hour before the flight. On the up-side, overpriced in Serbia remains a relative term. I got breakfast for about 500 dinar; that’s less than 10 USD and still slightly cheaper than you would find at an American airport for a similar amount of food.