IRrelevant ?
Longtime blogfriend Bruce Kesler, posting at Maggie’s Farm points to the growing disconnection between our largest group of academic foreign policy specialists and…..our actual foreign policy.
Wonder why International Relations professors are ignored?
International Relations professors “are often the last people a president turns to for advice on running the world. At least, that’s what the professors say,” in a 2008 survey of 1743 IR faculty at every 4-year college and university in the US. “Most revealing? Nearly 40 percent of respondents reported that these scholars have “no impact” on foreign policy or even the public discourse about it.” Foreign Policy reports the results.
If they, or you, are wondering why they are so irrelevant, just look at their top priority: “It’s a largely liberal internationalist agenda, one that names the most important foreign-policy priorities facing the United States as global climate change (37 percent).”
….Still wondering? Read on:
“In 2008, for instance, we see fewer than half as many scholars (23 percent of respondents in 2008 compared to to 48 percent in 2006) describing terrorism as one of the three most significant current foreign policy challenges facing the United States. Most surprisingly, while 50 percent of U.S. scholars in 2006 said that terrorism was one of the most important foreign policy issues the United states would face over the subsequent decade, in 2008 only 1 percent of respondents agreed….Concern over several other foreign policy issues is also declining markedly: when asked about the most important problems facing the country over the next ten years 18 percent fewer respondents chose WMD proliferation, 12 percent fewer said armed conflict in the Middle east, and 13 percent fewer indicated failed states. At the same time, 17 percent more respondents in 2008 than in 2006 believed that climate change will pose a serious challenge…”
I suspect political ideology, intellectual fashion and academic tenure and promotion requirements for increasingly fractionated specialization all play a role in creating a worldview divorced from the actual community of senior foreign policy practitioners, career and appointee, Democrat and Republican. As for impacting public discourse, you have a few, august, “big names” who command a wide respect in and outside of the field and then some younger professor bloggers (like Daniel Drezner or our friends at Duck of Minerva) with a demonstrated ability to communicate effectively in normal, well-written, English. The vast, jargon -enamored, academic IR mainstream goes unheard and would probably not be understood by the average voter if they were ( my field, history, is no shining example of persuasive writing either).
Speaking of Drezner, he points to the Obama administration raiding academia to fill second through fifth tier foreign policy appointments. Will they change the game ? Probably not enough of them nor are they as a group as Left as the IR professoriate as a whole.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:59 am
IR…LMAO
February 20th, 2009 at 4:22 am
"I suspect political ideology, intellectual fashion and academic tenure and promotion requirements for increasingly fractionated specialization all play a role in creating a worldview divorced from the actual community of senior foreign policy practitioners, career and appointee, Democrat and Republican."Right on. 90% of everything produced by the academy is useless for the real world, part of its SOP regarding the production of ‘objective science’, which everyone pretends is politically neutral, or adopting tired lefty-critiques of the government. Hence, IR has trouble as an ‘applied’ discipline since theory is so divorced from reality.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Hi M1 and Stephen,
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Serious policy makers do not have the time for ritualistic cant and most field ppl can get very irritated by it. They want pragmatic, clear, innovative, advice that they would not have thought of themselves – academics by and large are relatively bright, a few are geniuses, this is a task within their capacities – that considers real world problems from DIME angles. If you can also work in an attractive political "hook" that makes selling the policy easier, so much the better.
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Of course, academics have mortgages and mouths to feed like everyone else. If they do not conform to their received culture – however stupid and counterproductive at times- they will be out on their ass long before tenure becomes a possibility. Look at the grief the anthropologists helping the Dept. of Defense are getting from their professional colleagues – they are basically apostates now.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:46 am
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February 20th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Zen – I agree with you about "the vast, jargon-enamored, academic IR mainstream". But if IR academics are placing global climate change as top priority, then my faith in them has been restored. As a threat to civilization, terrorism pales into insignificance beside the very real dangers of climate change.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
It surprises me that terrorism persisted as the #1 threat as late as 2006. Its decline in the last couple of years represents a reassertion of common sense.
February 20th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
"…academics have mortgages and mouths to feed like everyone else. If they do not conform to their received culture – however stupid and counterproductive at times- they will be out on their ass long before tenure becomes a possibility."
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Worse, far worse. Since everybody knows this, the self-selection begins before people even consider a career in academics. I speak from personal experience. There was no way I was going to stick my head in that guillotine.
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So the entire academic spectrum in many fields starts on the left and just keeps going.
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The extreme right among a lot academics is therefore social democrats and other left-liberals who misjudged the radicalism of their future peers and bosses. The center is hard left. The extreme left is paranoic and out of touch with reality.
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Since a lot of these people don’t talk to any other kind of people, they do not even have a conception of where normal resides.
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My father in law, a hard lefty, but honest in his way, a retired philosophy professor at a well-regarded state university, was a good bellwether. He told me categorically that anyone who voted for a Republican for anything lacked the intellectual and moral qualities that were required for university level research and teaching. Also, as an "old guy" who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, he was culturally and intellectually and ideologically at the far right in his department when he retired.
February 21st, 2009 at 9:19 am
Lex,
"…Since everybody knows this, the self-selection begins before people even consider a career in academics. I speak from personal experience. There was no way I was going to stick my head in that guillotine. …"
Spot on.
Just mirrors my experience in Germany inthe 80s. At that time I was tempted by history / IR / political science on the one hand, the law on the other. The problem outlined by Lex was a deciding factor, the law faculties being politically balanced (well, reasonably) in Germany. Of course employers outside of the academic world were and are also aware of this. So I studied law and later went into the private sector, giving law lectures on the side just for the fun of it.
Btw I know the French system reasonably well. The political bias is comparable in France at university level though the Grandes Ecoles (mostly elite postgrad education) may be different in some fields of research.
FMC
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 am
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