MPSA Blog
Diffusion by Any Means Necessary
By Harold “Harry” Young of Austin Peay State University Members of the "GRAD SCHOOL: What to Expect at a Job Interview at a Teaching School" roundtable at the 2018 MPSA conference in Chicago. They stood in place at each poster in the exhibit hall, graduate students eager to share their research…
Reflections on the #MPSA18 Mentoring Reception
On the second day of the 76th Annual Conference, MPSA held a mentoring reception for which graduate students, PhD recipients in non-academic positions, junior, mid-career, and contingent faculty could select volunteer mentors for small group mentoring to discuss their current research and…
More Bridging, Less Bonding: New Views of Social Capital
(or, Why I am Going to Watch Roseanne) by Michael A. Smith of Emporia State University Social capital has been a popular concept in political science, at least since the publication of Almond and Verba’s classic book The Civic Culture in 1963. The idea waned for a while, then came roaring back in…
Finger on the Pulse: Alive and Kicking at MPSA 2018
By Harold "Harry" Young of Austin Peay State University At this year’s MPSA conference, I was on a mission to uncover what participants were so serious about as they hovered over laptops and chatted in small groups. My personal interactions revealed groups generally mystified and frightened by the…
Politics and Ontology in Thucydides' story of Alcmaeon
By Borden Flanagan of American University The story of Alcmaeon, in an emphatically unnecessary digression, frames Periclean imperialism in terms of the cosmological themes of motion and rest, thereby suggesting how ontological questions are disclosed in fundamental political problems. Thucydides’…
The Public Expert: How Academics Can Break the Ivory Tower Stereotype #MPSA18
By Alex Ellison In the professional development track at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, IL, there were a couple of sessions on using social media in academia and sharing research in more easy-to-digest ways with the general public. In higher education, there is…
The New Political Scientists—We’re Live, We’re Nationwide, and We’re Online
By Michael A. Smith, Professor of Political Science at Emporia State University On the first day of the Midwest Political Science Conference (#MPSA18 on Twitter), I spotted both a roundtable and a vendor booth on the same topic: using Wikipedia in the classroom. That’s right—Wikipedia may be…
Do Academics Stink at Work/Life Balance?
And is this scaring away students? By Alex Ellison At the 2018 Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, IL, I attended the session, Trying to Balance Work and Life with Joel Raveloharimisy from Andrews University, William Raymond from Benedictine College, Marjorie Hershey…
Why the 2020 census shouldn't ask about your citizenship status
A naturalization ceremony, in December 2015. AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File Jennifer Van Hook, Pennsylvania State University “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” On March 26, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that a citizenship question would be added to the 2020 census. This question,…
The 2018 MPSA Conference Is Here: What Have You Done for Me Lately?
By Harold Young of Austin Peay State University “Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.” ― Samuel P. Huntington I must admit I am sometimes coy in responding to the question, "So, what do you do?” When I say I am a professor of…