Subscribe in a reader Based on lectures from my courses in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict and the Politics of Population Change in the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. If you can attend lectures and seminars twice a week for two years (or four times a week for one year) in London (Bloomsbury WC1), you can... Read more
Matt on (Methodological) Masturbation Matthew Flinders of Sheffield University made an interesting speech at the PSA in Belfast, accusing political scientists of ‘methodological masturbation’ and failing to communicate with politicians and the wider politically-engaged public. I think he’s largely right, but not entirely. He’s... Read more
The 20-something demographic has been a painful battleground for the church. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%, are entering college, encountering new ideologies, and leaving the church entirely between the ages of the 18 and 30. Many college-level concepts, especially environmental responsibility or climate control, are seen as hostile toward... Read more
The British government’s spending review looms on 20 October, and higher education looks like a low hanging target for major cuts, all of which puts me in a pensive mood. The numbers of students admitted to higher education will be reduced: an event whose epochal significance has gone unnoticed. In fact this represents the high-water mark of a... Read more
The fading of green politics during the current economic downturn suggests that environmentalism is a luxury good. Does this mean that it has conservative properties? It just might, for in the coming decades, green may turn out to be as close to Tory blue on the ideological spectrum as it is on the electromagnetic one. This is because prioritising reductions... Read more