A smidgen of autobiography

An outfit called Kashmir Tour Packages has left a comment on the previous post (actually it's an ad, not a comment, but whatever...). [Note added later: I have deleted the ad.]

I've been in Kashmir once, as a child traveling with my family; we were living in what was then East Pakistan and the Kashmir excursion was part of a vacation. We stayed on a houseboat for part of the time; I don't remember the trip very well. The landscape in Kashmir is indeed beautiful; however, these days I wouldn't want to travel in the immediate vicinity of the Line of Control, since Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been exchanging fire there, with resultant fatalities, in the last week or two. Tourists are presumably never allowed to get near the LoC anyway.

Btw, what about the UN observing/monitoring contingent in Kashmir? There is one, I believe, and has been for many years. But unless I'm mistaken, their terms of engagement, which are less 'active' than those of certain UN contingents elsewhere, don't permit them to do  anything once firing starts. It's strictly an observational mission. The rationale is that the presence of UN observers, even if they're not empowered to do much of anything, will have a pacifying effect. This proposition is non-falsifiable, since we don't know exactly how much more violence, if any, would have occurred if the UN weren't there. But on balance I suppose it's better to have them there than not.

Added later: For the LoC clashes through the prism of 'the spiral model', see here. (H/t D. Nexon)

How to f*** up grad school (among other things), in a few easy lessons

Some encouragement from Kindred Winecoff over at IPE@UNC has persuaded me to take a shot at a post outlining the mistakes I made during my career (such as it was) as a graduate student. This will not be a now-I-reveal-everything sort of post -- I've chosen to blog under my initials, after all -- but I think I can manage to convey some points without going into too many specifics and details. (Well, having written it, it turns out I have gone into some details. I also realize that I probably don't come off as a paragon of wisdom and scholarly wonderful-ness in this post. So be it.)

***

My situation was unusual from the start, because I was considerably older than most Ph.D. students when I began grad school. I had gone to law school (also a mistake, btw, but never mind that now) almost right after college (I took one year in between them), and then after law school worked for a number of years -- not, for the most part, practicing law, though I did do that briefly, but rather working in fairly conventional go-to-an-office-sit-at-a-computer-edit-and-write-stuff type of employment (it wasn't journalism as usually understood but somewhat more specialized). I eventually got bored with that, decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my working life doing it, and decided to go back to school.

I applied to a couple of M.A. programs (not simultaneously but in succession). The first one was a rather prestigious one that I didn't get into. The second institution not only admitted me to its M.A. program but ended up -- for reasons that largely had to do with some idiosyncratic factors not worth going into -- offering me a place in its Ph.D. program.

Mistake #1: I should never have accepted that offer without (i) thinking longer and harder than I did about whether I really wanted to get a Ph.D. and (ii) if so, whether I wanted to get it at that institution.

The institution in question was not a traditional political science department (my Ph.D. says International Relations, not Political Science), but the majority of faculty members were political scientists. The program was closer to a "big thinking and deep theorizing" (Kindred's words) type of program than to what Dan N. calls an "overprofessionalized" program. I had to take exactly one quant methods course, which was fairly worthless, and that was it. (At the time that was fine with me: I stopped high school math after 11th-grade trigonometry and analytic geometry, or whatever the course was called, and never took calculus, anywhere, though I certainly could have.)

I actually enjoyed aspects of my first couple of years as a PhD student, despite the heavy reading/writing load. Perhaps partly because, as I've already said, this was not a traditional pol sci department, the required first-year seminars were along the lines of Big Books and Big Theory (not exclusively but to a fair extent). So in my first year (this was the mid-'90s, btw, just to give the time frame) I read, for instance, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (much of) Polanyi's The Great Transformation, re-read some of the Marx and Weber that I'd read in college, plus a bit of Kant and Plato and Hobbes and Grotius, plus, of course, standard IR theory stuff: Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis; Oye et al., Cooperation Under Anarchy; Snyder, Myths of Empire, etc. (Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics hadn't been published yet. I read that later, on my own, when I was writing my diss.) Plus I took a course with a respected historian on U.S. diplomacy in WW2 and the Cold War and wrote a paper on Kennan. That was fun. Wrote another paper for which I read some of the lit. on civil society and social movements. Also did an independent reading course (this was the second year, I think) for which, among other things, I plowed through all of Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the space of a few days -- don't recommend doing that unless you have to. One gap in the first year, though, even on its own Big Theory terms, was the modern literature on comparative politics. (Note: The program's curriculum has been modified in various ways in the intervening years.)

Now this was all fine but I really had no idea what I was going to write my dissertation about. At the time that seemed not to matter much, even though the then-Dean of the school had asked all of us entering PhD students for our tentative dissertation topics in the second week we were there. (I told him, in politer language, that I hadn't the slightest f***ing idea what my topic was going to be.) Anyway...

Mistake #2: I did not really think about my training in relation to the job market. I figured if I was finding grad school reasonably interesting and learning something, that was enough.

Mistake #3: When it came time to choose a dissertation topic, I chose one that was not going to help me on the job market. If I had been attending a marquee institution -- a Columbia, Berkeley, Princeton, perhaps (even) Chapel Hill [still with me, Kindred? :-)] -- I could have gotten away with the topic I chose, but the combination of topic and institution was not good. (It was a historically-oriented topic, though of course I had to connect it to the present, since it was an IR diss.) Plus, frankly, my execution of it was ok but not stellar. It passed muster as a dissertation but that's about it. (I'm sure the administration's attitude was: Are you still here? Defend your ******* dissertation and leave, already.) Afterward I thought about trying to get some journal articles out of it, began to write one, but then decided I was really too sick of the whole subject to be able to do that.

Mistake #4: Sticking it out and finishing was probably, under the circumstances, Mistake #4. Obviously I did finish, even though, for reasons not entirely (though mostly) my fault, it took me a long time. I went on the academic job market after doing a bit of adjunct teaching (because I hadn't done a lot of teaching as a grad student; just one semester's worth), but I didn't have to send out a huge number of applications in order to discover that no university or college was much interested in hiring me -- and, all in all, I can't really blame them too much. I'm not sure I would have hired me, given the presumed competition.

***

I'm not wealthy, certainly not in the sense in which most Americans use that word, but, without going into detail, my circumstances are such that I don't need a job to survive, at least for the time being. Which is good, because no one is exactly beating down the doors to hire me. I don't have a narrow, focused policy specialty (e.g., environmental issues, nonproliferation, etc.), truly deep regional knowledge, or tech (statistics etc.) skills. In other words, I'm a generalist, and in a field where the demand for them is not very high. I could probably be a decent teacher but I'm not so desperate to teach that I'm enthusiastic about adjuncting; I don't need to do it to eat and I don't really like teaching the intro course, which is all I've ever taught. So if/when I do need a job I'm probably going to have to pound the proverbial pavement (even if I have to take some stuff off my résumé so I'm not rejected as overqualified for whatever I'm applying for).

I will conclude with an anecdote: last month I gave a guest talk in a friend's intro IR class. I enjoyed doing it, there was a lively discussion, the students asked good questions, etc. At one point I had occasion to remark: "Most of you are not going to become IR theorists," and then I added "I hope." My friend, the class's prof, looked surprised, but grinned. I pretty much meant it: Parents, don't let your children grow up to be IR theorists.

Well, this post has probably not contributed all that much to the sum total of wisdom in the blogosphere but writing it has been more enjoyable, believe it or not, than the post on growth, poverty, and inequality that I'm supposed to be writing. That will appear when I get around to finishing it.

Clarifying addendum (tacked on later): My point in this post is not to argue that all pol sci grad students should load up on quant methods, nor am I defending "over-professionalization" in graduate training. In my own case, going the quant route would have been rather absurd. I'm just saying as a practical matter that grad students have to be conscious of how their choices will affect their future chances of employment etc. In comments at DofM, PTJ has repeatedly made the point that one doesn't need a lot of quant/stats background to get an IR academic job in the U.S., provided one is willing to go outside the urban centers, major research institutions etc., and he cites some of his own students who have gotten jobs as examples. I think PTJ is right on this, but I would point out that many (or some) of his students may have written on interesting or 'hot'-ish topics, which helps; moreover, being acquainted with PTJ, as I am, I would imagine -- I don't know but I'm guessing -- that he really 'goes to bat' for his students (in a way that not all advisors necessarily do), and that's also got to help.

Tintin's 'American moment'

Like Gregory Cowles and his brothers, my brother and I were fans of the Tintin books as kids. (It was only much later that it dawned on me why they might provoke criticism.)

Bangladesh is 40

This past Friday was the fortieth anniversary of Bangladesh's independence: Dec. 16, 1971 was the day on which the war of liberation ended. Unfortunately the celebrations were marred by some violence.

Regular readers of this blog may be aware of my interest in the country, which stems from having lived there as a child in the early '60s (when it was still East Pakistan). As a 14-year-old in the U.S., I was aware of and followed the events that led to Bangladesh's independence. The infamous Nixon-Kissinger "tilt" toward Pakistan, at time when its ruler Yahya Khan was engaged in a brutal, indeed quasi-genocidal effort to put down the independence movement, partly reflected the way in which so much in the Nixon White House was seen through the lens of Cold War politics, even in the era of detente. (See, e.g., Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, pp. 341-42 [these two pages are available on Google Books]).

I have not been following developments in Bangladesh very closely (maybe switching my home page back to the BBC would help), but on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its independence I extend an obscure blogger's best wishes and the hope that there will be many more anniversaries.

We've got class, baby (and the classics)

Just discovered: the blog of the right-wing artsy, lit-crit-y, bellettristic (take your pick) The New Criterion is called Armavirumque. As in Arma virumque cano. As in 'of arms and a man I sing'. As in the Aeneid.

Now I did not have a classical education (cough, choke), but my mother attended Girls' Latin School, and as a kid/teenager/youth/young adult the one and only line of Latin I can recall hearing her utter was Arma virumque cano. I never read the Aeneid in English, one of many gaps in my supposedly (supposedly) first-class secondary and college education. And it was not until a bit later on that it dawned on me that vir means "man". As in "virility". As in virtú. As in Machiavelli. (Oh yeah, right....)

P.s. I am reliably informed by Wikipedia that Girls' Latin is now called Boston Latin Academy, and it probably has been for a long time (I'm too lazy to actually read the entry right now). O tempora O mores. Whatever.

Carpe diem

When certain sociologists and psychologists find themselves insufficiently occupied, they invent new phases of the life cycle. That's one possible, admittedly somewhat cynical reaction to the piece in the NYT magazine on 20-somethings taking longer to reach 'adulthood' as conventionally defined. My patience for this kind of article tends to be so limited that I doubt I would have read much beyond the first couple of pages in the print version (which comes out Sunday); confronted with the online version, I read even less. However, I read enough to get the gist and enough to furnish an excuse for a post.

My take on this topic is much influenced, not surprisingly, by my personal history. When I was in my 20s, I wish someone had said to me: "Look, you will only be this age once. Don't feel that you need to rush into a career. Take some time to reflect on what you really want to do, perhaps travel, perhaps just mess around. Don't be afraid to take a rather low-paying, low-status job for a while when you need money. Explore, be adventurous." As best as I can recall, no one said this, or anything like this, to me, nor was it, I think, standard advice in that era (what era? well, just to fix a date, I turned 22 in June 1979, in fact on the very day I graduated from college). I went through college in four years without taking any time off (stupidly), and although I did take a one-year break from school between college and law school, I spent most of that year working. I then went straight through law school and on graduating I considered myself lucky to find a job (because graduating with a so-so record from an o.k. but non-elite law school in 1983 was not a recipe for being inundated with job offers). I wish someone had asked me at some point why I was in law school at all, but no one, as best I can recall, did. And, just to take another example, my college roommate's path was even more lockstep than mine: he didn't take any break at all between college and law school, but went straight through, getting his law degree in '82. (True, he went to a more prestigious law school than I did, and he seems to have liked his subsequent career; but I digress.)

The point is that when I see these hand-wringing articles about why young people are taking so long to 'grow up,' I think: 20-somethings should be allowed to take their time to grow up. They shouldn't feel they have to hit certain benchmarks (schooling, career, marriage, children) by a certain point, nor should society at large be concerned by their lack of interest in doing so. I do understand why people are worried about the phenomenon of young people moving back in with their parents, but that's not the central issue here. The main issue is that you're only 25 once. Readers of a certain age may remember that old TV ad (was it for beer? yes) in which the announcer intones: "You only go around once in life." A banality, of course, but it's true: you only go around once. This need not be a prescription for hedonism; rather, a prescription for considering possibilities. Maybe more middle-class kids should even think about (gasp) serving in the military. Or working for a cause, even if the job is difficult and ill paid (though many are doing this already, I admit). But I would say to a young person: whatever the exact course, step off the treadmill for a while; trust me, it will be there waiting for you when you get back.

Angkor Wat exists

Two notes:

1) I will have a post up on Citizens United v. FEC; aiming for next week.

2) I can't resist saying this somewhere, and while perhaps it more properly belongs on the comment thread attached to this recent Duck of Minerva post, I'm going to put it here instead. ProfPTJ, in the course of explaining his philosophy-of-science position of "ontological monism," distinguishes it from a rejection of "common-sense realism" and writes: "One need not make profound ontological investments in order to assent to the proposition that Angkor Wat exists, even if one is very unlikely to ever go there and see it in person."
Well (how can I say this without sounding smug and insufferable?) I have actually been to Angkor Wat, albeit a very long time ago as a young child (seven-ish I'd say, maybe six) with my parents and brother. (We were living in E. Pakistan, as it then was, at the time, and we were either going on home leave or coming back from it.) This was obviously before the U.S. pulled Cambodia into the Indochina conflict and Angkor Wat became a dangerous place. I think I have no direct first-hand recollections, but there are photos somewhere, and for present purposes I admit them into evidence as equivalent to first-hand recollection. One of our fellow tourists was an Oxford don, no longer alive, whose books I read years later in college. Anyway, I don't have to make any ontological investment, profound or otherwise, to assent to the proposition that Angkor Wat exists.
And on that insufferable note, I wish you a nice weekend.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this...

...because of what it might reveal about my reading habits, but I just now learned of Paul Samuelson's death, and from a blog, not a newspaper.

I don't generally note deaths here, even of notable people (though in recent months I did make exceptions for Kennedy and McNamara, in both cases because there was something I thought I wanted to say, even if not at much length). Not being an economist, I have nothing really to say about Samuelson except the most trivial, solipsistic thing: sitting on my bookcase -- actually now it's on my desk as I'm typing this -- is the tenth edition of Samuelson's Economics (copyright 1976), and suffice to say that it was brand new when I bought it. I don't do the confessional mode much, but I suddenly feel older than I did ten minutes ago (of course I am ten minutes older, but you know what I mean). It was not my favorite book, but I duly read it (well, parts of it), and I managed to pass the course (no, you may not ask what my grade was). I suppose I might even have managed to learn some basic "mainstream" economics, circa 1976.

Contrary to some advice for students going around these days -- there is so much more advice available now -- I did not "tech up" in college: no economics beyond the intro course, no statistics; but then I was never that way inclined. Nowadays, if I really put my mind to it, I can (more or less) understand quantitative articles in my field, or at least get the gist (unless they're only about methodology, in which case maybe not). But that's about it. Oh well.

Edward M. Kennedy

Off-the-cuff thoughts (more considered ones may come later):

His record of legislative accomplishment, which was very impressive even if one did not agree with every one of his positions, was a tribute both to his own skill and that of his staff, which was always one of the best in the Senate. (Not that I knew this first-hand, but it was what everyone said.)

In 1980 I supported his campaign for the Democratic nomination and even ran as a candidate for Kennedy delegate. (I think I might have gotten ten votes or so; I know my late grandmother voted for me because I personally escorted her to the voting booth.) One of the most vivid political memories I have is watching Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic convention, probably the greatest convention speech of the last 40 or 50 years. It was written by Robert Shrum and delivered superbly by Kennedy. The line in the speech about Ronald Reagan having no right to quote FDR still sends shivers down my spine. Great stuff. Kennedy will be missed, especially now with health care reform on the front burner. R.I.P.

P.s. John Sides links to an audio clip from the 1980 speech.
And National Journal collects reminiscences of former aides and others.

One small moment in time

When I was in college, I took a lecture course on modern drama. The professor was Robert Chapman. For reasons that had nothing to do with Chapman, the course was not an especially happy experience; and I never got to know Chapman, not being an English major or a student actor and feeling, predictably if perhaps stupidly, that I had no reason to go to his office hours.

One morning about halfway through the course, Chapman strode to the podium and announced, without preface or throat-clearing: "George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House is the greatest play written in English since Shakespeare." Wow, I thought. Nice opening line. Dramatic. Then a student who had actually been keeping up with the reading raised his or her hand and informed the professor that, according to the syllabus, the day's lecture was not supposed to be on Heartbreak House but on some other play. Chapman abruptly turned around, went back to his office, returned with a different set of notes, and proceeded to give the correct lecture. His lecture on Heartbreak House had been spoiled for that semester.

I knew virtually nothing about Robert Chapman when I sat in his course, and indeed it was only very recently, when I was prompted for some reason to find his obituary online, that I learned something about him. Among other things I learned that, although a tenured professor in Harvard's English department, he had no graduate degrees: he had a bachelor's degree from Princeton and that was it. Apparently he liked to boast that he and the famous critic and scholar Harry Levin were the only members of the department who lacked graduate credentials.

I remember little else about that week in 1976, or maybe that month; but I'll always remember the morning when Robert Chapman began his lecture on Shaw with that dramatic flourish, and then had to stop, turn around, and go back to his office. I think I might have felt a little bit angry at the student who informed him of his mistake. I still do.

Bangladeshi filmmaker builds replica of Taj Mahal, and Sonargaon braces for tourist onslaught

A Bangladeshi film director has constructed a $58 million replica of the Taj Mahal in Sonargaon, a town about an hour's drive from the capital, Dhaka. In 1994, my brother and I were in Bangladesh and we visited Sonargaon. It was, as I recall, a rather sleepy little town; checking my (unfortunately) cryptic notes on the trip to refresh my memory, I see that Sonargaon had several tourist attractions, including some ruins and a Folk Art Museum. The idea of a Taj Mahal plunked down there is a mite bizarre, but the notion apparently is to let Bangladeshis see a Taj since many don't have the money or opportunity to travel to Agra to see the Taj. I suppose it also says something about the relative success of Bangladesh in recent years that a filmmaker can spend $58 million on this project, importing Italian marble and Belgian diamonds.