Operating in a world with no truth
Dear readers: This is a somewhat different post than normal. It addresses a question that’s been on my mind for…
Category: peace & conflict
Creating Fit-for-Purpose Peacebuilding Evaluation: Three Key Investments (guest cross-post)
The following is a cross-post from friend-of-the-blog Andrew Blum; it originally appeared on the PeaceLab2016 blog. Beyond being a generally insightful…
How peacebuilding and opening governance can work together
I had a guest post on Global Integrity’s blog last week, based on a recent event in DC. The teaser:…
“Action almost never achieves its purpose.”
It’s hard to think about the new war against ISIS without being reminded of the contingent nature of history: America finds itself in a war again because of what it did (or didn’t do) last time around. And its political decision-making apparatus has…
Is America finally talking about police militarization?
If so, then that might be a small silver lining on the tragedy in Missouri this week. I was worried that it was just my social media feeds — which admittedly skew lefty and political — but a wide range of…
Strategy is as strategy does
When I was in undergrad, I took an analytical writing course that focused on war and conflict. It was an odd mix: though we used essays and articles related to war as prompts, and the instructor was from the international relations…
Not even a title comes to mind
A few folks have asked for my take on the recent attack in Nairobi. I was living there last year. More than one of this blog’s posts were written at Westgate’s Artcaffe. My interest in the politics and security of…
No Ordinary Elections
IRIN News has done a multimedia documentary on Kenya’s upcoming elections. It includes interviews with a variety of civic leaders, activists and artists. Worth checking out. The introductory video is below. Go to the site itself for other videos and resources. (The interview…
Pritchett, feedback loops, and the accountability conundrum
Last week I attended a seminar given by Lant Pritchett at the Center for Global Development where he discussed his new working paper (co-authored with Salimah Samji and Jeffrey Hammer), “It’s all about MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning (‘e’) to Crawl…
Citius, Altius, Fortius: Why the Olympics are the pinnacle of civilization
Guys, I love the Olympics. Please humor me by hitting “play” on the following as you read this blog post.…