Counting the Casualties

I was inspired by a piece in the National Post today about a memo that Stephen Harper received in 2007 about the costs Canada was paying in Afghanistan in blood compared to the allies to post this at CIC.

Check it out.

Super Over-Reach

Joe Queenan criticizes Hollywood for the proliferation of Superhero movies.  While there are some decent points buried in the piece, the article is pretty contradictory and also overlooks some key points. 

Are there too many superhero movies today?  Probably.  The studios realized that this stuff sells worldwide (the Chinese like 'em), and they realized they needed to keep putting out movies to keep the rights (hence the reboots of Spider-man and Superman).  But the lamentation here reminds me of the old "Star Wars" killed the movie industry stuff.  Yes, there is a desire to gamble on the big profits of an Avengers rather than spend less money on a mid-budget complex tale of some kind.  But independent movies still exist, and Hollywood is always swinging to the latest trend like a web-slinger, so I am not so worried.  Of course, the funny thing is that the biggest franchise over the past decade is not based on comic books but book books--Harry Potter.

Anyhow, it is the case that movies get played out--that the first second series of Batman movies with Michael Keaton started to suck.  Oops.  The new Dark Knight peaked with the second movie, as Heath Ledger's Joker distracted folks from the tremendous plot holes better than Bane did in the third movie.  The first Spider-man series peaked again with the second and then the third was not so good.

But sometimes there is progress, as the Hulk movies were not very good, but the Hulk in Avengers was pretty terrific.  Queenan is wrong about Captain America and the Avengers--both movies were fun and interesting and pretty darned coherent, unlike his post, which travels all over the place.  And then he gets, um, stupid:

"All superheroes are Republicans" he says.  Really?  Are the X-Men Republicans?  Given that the comic books and the movies contain heaps of parables/metaphors/parallels to gay rights struggles, fights against racism and pleas for tolerance, they don't appear that Republican.  Tony Stark is a defense contractor that realizes his sins and develops remorse.

Yes, superhero movies have problems with women.  And that does come from the comic books. The problem is not comic book buyers "may not even be interested in girls. They are certainly not interested in girls with superpowers."  Have you seen the comic book art?   I was trying to find a picture of Jean Grey as the Phoenix the other day, but it was difficult as nearly all of the pics emphasize her breasts to the point of being nearly porn (see to the right).  But there are also positive female role
models in the comic books and in some of the movies: Storm, Kitty Pryde and Rogue in the X-Men books (and a bit less so in the movies), Black Widow in the movies and heaps of women in the Avengers books...  The real problem is that people have been messing up the making of a Wonder Woman movie that would help ameliorate the bias, and that does speak to Hollywood's problems.  But we can now sell movies in the world with super female protagonists: Lara Croft to name the most obvious case.  Hunger Games is also pretty successful.

"Superhero movies are made for a society that has basically given up."  Really?  X-Men and Spider-man (the first series) started before 9/11 and before the financial crash.  Many of these movies were made in the boom times before 2008, so the timing is just a bit strange.

Queenan contradicts himself towards the end:

it would be a mistake to say that all superhero movies are the same. The Dark Knight movies are dark. The Iron Man movies are funny. The Hulk movies are goofy. The X-Men movies are complicated. Captain America was camp, Thor a bit silly, The Avengers sillier still. The Spider-Man movies are closest to conventional movies, placing ordinary people in difficult situations. The Spider-Man movies also feature a romance that seems quite believable, unlike Iron Man.

 Exactly.  Trying to impose a meta-narrative on this is just as silly as the costumes these folks wear (remember George Clooney's Bat-nipples?).  The real meta-narrative is this: action movies sell well around the world as the action does not need dubbing/translation.  Superheroes are bigger action movies, so blame the Chinese for buying the stuff and for Hollywood focusing on ... trying to make money.  The joy of the 21st century is that people can make their own movies and disseminate them without spending hundreds of millions of dollars.  The internet does have a magic way of helping quality get out there.  And that gets to a second reason why the big action movies will be with us for a while--they work best on the big screens.  Other kinds of movies can be downloaded and watched at home.  My family tends to save its movie money for those movies that look best on the big screens and now find alternatives to Blockbuster to catch the smaller ones.

I agree that we can and should over-intellectualize the movies--my blog is chock full of playing with the ideas in these movies and seeing what they say about our concepts and vice versa.  I just don't want to impose a false view that all of the stuff is the same.  Just like any era in the movies, there is good stuff and bad stuff, and some of the good stuff does not sell and some of the bad stuff does.

And, yes, I was interviewed yesterday for a CBC show that will be on today about my reactions to this article.  My guess is that my appearance will be far shorter than this blog post.

Confused by Transition

Today is apparently the day that the transition of Afghanistan's security is, um, complete.   I did not realize what transition means apparently in practice--that NATO troops are only backing up the Afghan National Army if they are in super-serious trouble.  Ambushes?  Nah, that's ok.  Why?  Because we don't want to build up dependency.  We are kind of late on that, aren't we?  I get weaning these guys off, but there are a few questions this raises.

How much bleeding is the ANA prepared for, given that they are not even getting medevac?  I get the idea of reducing support, but this seems to be a bit much.  Given that we want this to go well, that we don't want the ANA to be gun-shy or to have more of an "attrition" problem--folks going AWOL, we might want to ease the transition just a bit.

How much of NATO is required to stick around?  If the status quo right now is that the ANA is doing all of the fighting with no partners fighting along side, it is not clear why NATO needs 97k troops on the ground.  Most of these folks are not training anybody, and these numbers are pretty close to those that existed for quite some time when NATO was doing all of the combat (well, those within NATO that engaged in combat). 

So, the funny thing is that on the rush to the exits, NATO seems to have stopped its mission significantly before it gets out the door.  So, what will the NATO troops be doing?  The funny thing about being the "in extremis" relief force is that "in extremis" can be read in a variety of ways--to do very, very little or to be actively engaged whenever any trouble appears or in between.  The NYT piece suggests that it is on the "do nothing" end of the "in extremis" help spectrum.

Given that much of the "information ops" about transition over the past few years has been less than accurate, we have to take this story with a grain of salt.

GoT Montage

I love a good montage.  There were some awesome ones in This is the End.  Since I cannot post those, here is a fun Game of Thrones one set to the 1980s Rocky style.

Retirement Delayed, Deferred, Dodged, Dismayed, Denigrated

Inside Higher Ed has a piece about a survey of  profs about when the boomers are likely to retire.  Given that my generation of profs have been hearing that the old profs were going to retire ever since we got started, pardon my lack of surprise.  In my last job, a solid hunk (more than 40%) of the full professors were at or above 65, with one closer to 90 than to 85.  Why retire when one can hang out with sharp young minds?  Can you retire, given the bumps in the markets?

Obviously, this can be extremely problematic.  I snarked on twitter thusly:

Selfish so far, why stop now MT @jtlevy: Data suggest baby boomer faculty putting off retirement | Inside Higher Ed http://t.co/djfyzfb0zB
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) June 17, 2013

That is, the boomers have been selfish in pretty much everything they have done (the original me generation that ironically hypocritically criticizes the millenials for being narcissists, just as they said the same about gen X).  Given that they have consumed pretty much everything else, why should we be surprised by the boomers not gracefully stepping aside. 

Who Can Save Us? Superheroes and Today's Crises

I got a strange invite last week--to be on CBC radio (rebroadcast on NPR apparently) to participate on a panel discussion about superheroes and who could be helpful in various world crises.  Really!  Here is the proof.  The other panelist runs a comic book shop, so he was far more up to date on the various trends in the books, such as Tony Stark as futurist (I remember him as an alcoholic). 

The choices were Superman, Wolverine, and Iron Man due to the particular movies coming out this summer, and the host set it up with Superman being UN-ish, Wolvie as black ops, and Iron Man as defense contractor.   The three issues/crises that we discussed were North Korea, Syria, and Al Qaeda/Taliban. 

Given that structure, it made sense to suggest Superman for NK.  Why?  Not because of his UN-ish-ness, as I reminded the host that Superman is from Kansas so he would not look all that diplomatic from a North Korean perspective.  Instead, given the multiplicity of military threats (artillery, missiles, nukes) that NK presents, only someone who can move superfast and can fly and has multiple weapons (fists, laser eyes, super breath) could do with it.

For Taliban/AQ, well, that is a dark war, and Wolvie's favorite phrase is: "I am the best at what I do, but what I do is not very nice."  Um, yeah.

For Syria, well, we had to use Iron Man since Superman was busy elsewhere plus Stark knows the weaknesses of the military technology.  Plus if Superman is an agent of the UN these days (I have no idea, I don't read the books but he did apparently renounce his American citizenship), then he would be stymied by the Russian veto.

Who did both of us recommend if not these three?  Wonder Woman.  The comic book shop owner cited her ambassadorial qualities, but I focused on the general set of findings that empowering women is associated with all kinds of good stuff--less war, less civil war, more economic growth, more democracy, etc.

Anyhow, what I would really recommend for these big crises: either the X-Men or the Avengers or perhaps the Fantastic Four.  Most of the big problems in the world are multidimensional, and teams are far better than individuals for handling such stuff.  And I know where folks can go if they need to figure out how teams/alliances operate in 21st century conflicts.

Easy Pickings: What Americans Will Tolerate For Security

Recent American politics is like all American politics: the organized minority can dominate the unorganized majority.

Brian MacFadden, NYT

The gun lobby has long been organized to stop and push back any and all efforts to manage guns.  The narrow interests of some gun producers plus a well-oiled organizational machine plus a handy set of popular but almost entirely false beliefs produce complete paralysis. 

The contrast is that phone users, internet users and the like are such very big groups of people and, thus far, few big industries in their corner, so that organization/lobbying is pretty much impossible.  McFadden may be right in that the Americans do not mind, but I think it is also that it is hard to organize a group such as "all consumers."  This is why the sugar industry can set up barriers to foreign sugar, which drives up the price of our cheezy puffs, as all of us face the costs of higher cheezy puffs but only a few companies sell sugar.  A lot easier to get the latter in a room than the former.

The only place where this battle between more security/less liberty has really been a fight?  Flying.  Because there are groups representing travelers and there are corporations that are hurt by too much intrusive security stuff.  Still, the security theater at the airports goes on, but efforts to do more have faced pushback.  The best example?  The Secret Service wanted to close permanently Washington National Airport after 9/11, but this would inconvenience Congresspeople and Senators who need to get home regularly (including avoiding NSA briefings to do so). 

Anyhow, the cartoon is interesting, but I have a different causal story than MacFadden's. It is less about tolerance and more about the politics of large groups versus the politics of small groups.

Public Outreach and Tenure Decisions

A recent tenure denial at Georgetown has gotten heaps of attention, in part because the candidate and the coverage seems surprised that appearing in the media did not help the guy get tenure.  While there are a variety of flaws in the piece (Georgetown is hardly a narrow-minded environment where only rational choice and quantitative work are accepted as worthy), I want to focus on the strange belief that media work would be expected to matter that much, arguing that it should not matter that much.  

Perhaps we should not be surprised at such expectations.  My mother thought my media stuff (not quite 600 appearances but over 200, I think) would help me get promoted/hired elsewhere a few years ago.  So, the reporter is not alone.  However, I would expect more from a reporter covering academia.

The reality is that media appearances does fit somewhere in the holy trinity of tenure applications: publishing, teaching and service--into that last category.  While formal rules might suggest some sort of equality, the reality is that at most places service is generally considered to be a minor part of the tenure evaluation.  We don't expect assistant professors to spend that much of their time to contributing to their department, university, community or profession, as developing a publishing record and teaching well takes priority (especially the former).  We expect those who are more senior to carry more of the load.  So, doing heaps of service before tenure is a bonus but not going to tip the case except when things are very, very close.  Doing absolutely no service, shirking all responsibilities, might hurt someone (hence no need for a collegiality clause).  So, doing heaps of media can only help improve one's service standing, which might matter just a bit.

But should media stuff matter more?  As someone who does a fair amount of it (television, radio, op-eds, interviews for newspapers/magazines), I don't think it should matter much.  Why?  Because the dark secret is there may not be much of a connection between media appearances and quality.  One gets contacted by the media because it happens to be that one's issue is hot and one happens to be ... around.  Yep, being around and then being willing to do it is pretty much all it takes.  Now, getting on Colbert as the candidate in question did is pretty special, but says more about luck and connections than about the value of the ideas presented.  Once one does do some media, one does get more and more opportunities because journalists/editors are ... lazy.  Once they have a reliable person who can talk in quick bursts clearly (still working on that) or being able to write in 750 words or less, one that can be reasonably articulate, they go back to the well again and again.  Oh, and one other factor--is the person going to say something that will support the reporter's preferred narrative?  My most embarrassing media experience was one of my first, where I went along with the narrative.  Oy.  Anyhow, media appearances are a matter of luck, opportunity and some willingness.  These are things that should not matter that much in making decisions about lifetime employment.  Yes, getting stuff published in the better journals and presses is partly about luck, it also has to do with the quality of research, the contribution to knowledge.

So, why should academics do media stuff, if not for getting tenure and promotion?  I have an urge to yell: that is what the money is for!  Grant money these days require dissemination.  I do think that we are obligated as scholars who "generate" knowledge to then share it.  But not everyone can or should do it.  Some people have work and expertise that does not relate to the events of the day or week or whatever.  Others are shy or nervous about being subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous editors, and I get that.  When one writes an article or book, one gets last cut, the last edit so that the words are yours.  When one does anything but live tv or radio, the news organization can cut, quote and present in ways that change the message, and that is problematic.  To me, given the controversies over the past few years (NSF funding, for example), it is imperative for some of us to do the media stuff to show that political scientists/scholars of IR can provide some insights, have value for society.  I also do it because I want to correct the misperceptions and misunderstandings out there even though I know that confirmation bias and other forces mean that people may not change their beliefs that much.

In short, do not expect media stuff or other service to carry the day for tenure/promotion. It is about the publications more than anything else (publish or perish is not a myth but a reality), that teaching can matter more or less depending on the place (one should could care about teaching well because it is a defining part of the job), and that service matters only at the very, very margins.  Be a good citizen both because it is right and because being a bad one might hurt, but don't expect it to matter that much for tenure.  You will have plenty of opportunities to do service when one is tenured.

Good Story, Bad Story, Great Story

Kid (Sebastien De La Cruz) sings national anthem, racists post crap because the boy is Latino, kid responds with class, team/city respond with class.


The San Antonio Spurs even had Sebastien perform a second night to give a nice finger to the haters and give support to the boy.  Sure, an easy call in a majority Latino city, but the right thing anyway.  Another reason to root for the Spurs. 

So, it was a good story that turned into a great story thanks to positive responses to the xenophobes.

The Collegiality Clause

This piece does a good job of discussing the challenge of having collegiality as part of the criteria for tenure/promotion in universities.  The stakes are, of course, very high, since tenuring a person who is pretty hostile/obnoxious means living with them for about twenty or forty years.  On the other hand, as the piece notes, coming up with criteria for good or bad collegiality is pretty hard, even harder than measuring research contributions or teaching quality. 

In my first tenure-track job, it was one of the tenure criteria, but given that the senior faculty were stacked with exceptionally un-collegial folks, the criteria could only be applied in ways that perpetuated hostilities.  So, that is clearly a danger.  The reality in tenure/promotion decisions is  that even without collegiality clauses, the standards can be bent enough that a committee can recommend those that they want to recommend and reject those that they do not want to recommend.  Not all tenure/promotion committees act that way, but it can happen [did it happen to me? um, sort of].  It is up to the rest of the university (and outside letters) to make sure that department committees do not bend the standards in this way.  The collegiality standard will always be hardest to correct by those up the chain as the teaching and publication and service records can be reviewed.  But assertions of asshole-ness? Unprovable and the folks up the chain may not correct for it as they defer to the folks closer to the candidate who know better.

On the other hand, I can see why folks would want not to tenure someone who is not collegial.  Stuck for life.  Lovely.  On the third hand, folks may hide their true nature until after tenure, so their lack of collegiality only becomes obvious after tenure. 

My general position here is that collegiality can be a tool to reject people who otherwise meet the criteria, and this tool is more likely to be abused than applied carefully and appropriately.  So, I would prefer that this clause not exist.  In my current and most recent jobs, it does not seem to be part of the standards, and that is a good thing. 

Making Fun of the Haters

The original Cheerios commercial was fine and sweet.  This is super sweet:


Suck it, haters.

Are We There Yet? Ambition, Ego, Careerism are the Dark Side

When listening to General (ret.) Walt Natynczyk's talk yesterday, I was most struck by the part where he talked about the greatest threats were ambition, egoism, careerism.  That is, he was talking about how important trust is to the military as it is the foundation of relationships (always fun when  warriors sound like self-help authors).  And this makes sense especially if one wants to follow a philosophy of mission command where the higher ups delegate a great deal of discretion to the folks down the chain of command, trusting them to do what is best, rather than restricting them out of fear of what they might do.

Anyhow, the point was that officers focused on their own careers are corrosive to trust and relationships.  Natynczyck's recommendation: declare success and move on.  That is, become comfortable with where you are at and focus on the job and not on where one stands.  He mentioned how there were two and three star generals/admirals who viewed not getting that next star as a failure, which he found laughable.

This really struck home as I have been thinking lately about career stuff, perhaps because I am happy with my job, or perhaps because I am now a Full Professor, which means there is no more promotions to be had.  So Natynczyk's question rang in my head: when can an academic declare success?  The most likely responses, I would guess, are:

• When one completes their PhD.
• When they get their first publication.
• When they get their first tenure track job.
• When their work is cited for the first time.
• When they get they get tenure.

I do concur with the general that focusing on one's own success at the expense of others can be pretty destructive.  I have known of colleagues to deliberately or less than deliberately prove to be unreliable as advisers and/or as contributors to department service because of their career pursuits.  I know that I became unreliable in my last job in terms of department service because the department was not abetting my career and was hurting my ego.  Was that a mature response that was productive for the organization?  Um, no.  On the other hand, I did keep up on the responsibilities I had to my students (grad and undergrad), so my egoism was not that harmful (see, I can still rationalize).

But I have reached the point where I think I can declare victory/success, and focus on doing what is fun and right and good and not so much on what is necessary for the next job/promotion/ambition.  I wish I reached that point earlier--my last years at McGill would have been far more enjoyable.  Hell, my time at Texas Tech would have been more enjoyable as well, as my pursuit of my career did sometimes impact what I was doing. 

Anyhow, I do like the idea of declaring success so that one can focus on doing what is good instead of doing what is good for one's career.  Of course, it is easy to say and hard to do when one is stuck in a spot where one does not want to be.

Ethical Warriors Down Under

Australia seems to have the same problem as the US--harassment and degradation are apparently not uncommon.  So, their chief of the army has this message:


Powerful stuff.  "If that does not suit you, then get out!"  "Show moral courage and take a stand against it."  "The standards you walk past is the standards you accept."

Ethical Warriors and Related Thoughts

I spent the past two days at the Kingston Conference on International Security, which is run by Queen's Center for International and Defence Policy and the CF's Land Force Doctrine and Training System (which is a lousy name for an army's intellectual center).  I am not a scholar of ethics so I got to learn much while my talk had little to do with ethics (see here for how I translated my slides into a CIC column).

What did I learn?  The Just War presentation was a good refresher as it was Just War 101, more or less.  Stephanie Belanger of the Royal Military College presented a very interesting study, using discourse analysis, of how Francophone and Anglophone soldiers used different words to describe themselves and their relationship to the CF.  They have essentially different identities.  It was fun to hear a German scholar talk about the Afghanistan mission after I had used his country as an example in my presentation.  Oops. 

I tended not to be drawn into the ethics presentations as much as the ones on the social science of ethics.  Deanna Messervey of the Canadian Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis had an interesting discussion of when people are more and less likely to engage in ethical behavior, given that stress causes people to process and decide automatically rather than reflectively.  Olenda Johnson of the Naval War College showed how backward the US Navy's leadership training effort has been and the current initiative of the NWC to revise how the Navy does leadership development.  Most surprising? That the current naval leadership has gotten behind this effort, even though they are a product of the old system. 

These are just some of the highlights.  The most impressive talk was given by the former Chief of the Defence Staff--Walt Natyncyzk.  It was the most dynamic, captivating talk.  I guess getting to four stars requires some ability, eh?  The funny thing is that his rep is being soft spoken.  Perhaps compared to his predecessor, but otherwise?  Not so much.  The talk was funny, moving, and provocative.  I am not sure what I can say about it since he looked up and pointed at me twice, saying that I could not write about what he was saying at that moment.  It was really funny, and the officers around me were highly amused. 
Anyhow, some of the interesting things he said that I think I can quote are:

• He preferred being responsible to being accountable.  An interesting distinction.
• That he was ready to quit after his tour in Iraq (he was on exchange with III corps when it went to Iraq, and he went with it.*
• He said he didn't want to be CDS because it was a glasshouse, it was really hard with incoming fire from all directions but was also the best job because he can make a contribution.
• Rather than asking a female officer her age, he said "what is your story" which is a really nice opening line for a superior to ask a subordinate he does not know.
• The greatest threats were ambition/ego/careerism which undermine the trust which is the basis of the relationships within the CF and between the CF and the public/government/allies.  "Declare success and remove the yoke of ambition." More on this point in a post later today.
• He was willing to talk about his own "scandal" which involved flying a government plane when some folks thought he should not have.
• His recipe for messaging: Go Ugly Early (do not let a mess sit around but confront it fast), Accept Responsiblity, Set the Record Straight respectfully, Focus on the Internal Audience.  
•  If you face a really tough decision, default to the choice that involves compassion.  
• He talked about his own post-war stress, diving off the bed during a thunderstorm.  The story he told was funny, but it was to get at the point that people in the Forces need to identify their own problems and ask for help.  To make that easier, the CF must reduce the stigma involved with mental health problems.  
• He seemed to call for an operational pause and a focus on maintaining the base of the force in the face of austerity and in the aftermath of such high optempo in Afghanistan (some SOF did eight tours).  
• One of his last references was most interesting.  He mentioned a particular unit of Americans that worked along side the Canadians in Kandahar.  When he met with them, he noticed their regimental colors, which included a ribbon or whatever from their very first victory--burning York in the War of 1812.  Enemies and now best of allies.  Indeed.

* During one of the meals, I was chatting with an officer who turned out to be a pilot who flew over Libya in the first rotation.  He informed me that the American Marine pilot that was embedded in his unit was not allowed to participate in the effort.  This was mighty strange, given the Canadian willingness to have its officers serve in their exchange positions even in wars that Canada avoided (Iraq).  The story indicated that the Americans had no clue about how to respond to this quick new mission.

One of the most interesting bits: that he and the folks of his generation were experiencing the decade of darkness (deep budget cuts) and complaining over beers (the folks in the story were Hillier and Stu Beare, who is currently commander of Canada's Joint Operations Command), and the realization that their near-quitting the force was less about the cuts and more about the failure of their bosses to inspire them.  Given this talk Natyncyzk gave and how he gave it, perhaps there is no shortage of inspiring leadership these days.  I don't think he is perfect, and I wish I had asked a key question about the conflict between being ethical and having to work with a government focused on message management, but the talk was damned impressive.

It was a good couple of days in Kingston, my Canadian home away from Canadian home.  I hope to get invited back again in the future (this was my second KCIS).