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Author: Michael C. Desch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122899X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
How professionalization and scholarly “rigor” made social scientists increasingly irrelevant to US national security policy To mobilize America’s intellectual resources to meet the security challenges of the post–9/11 world, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates observed that “we must again embrace eggheads and ideas.” But the gap between national security policymakers and international relations scholars has become a chasm. In Cult of the Irrelevant, Michael Desch traces the history of the relationship between the Beltway and the Ivory Tower from World War I to the present day. Recounting key Golden Age academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling and Walt Rostow, Desch’s narrative shows that social science research became most oriented toward practical problem-solving during times of war and that scholars returned to less relevant work during peacetime. Social science disciplines like political science rewarded work that was methodologically sophisticated over scholarship that engaged with the messy realities of national security policy, and academic culture increasingly turned away from the job of solving real-world problems. In the name of scientific objectivity, academics today frequently engage only in basic research that they hope will somehow trickle down to policymakers. Drawing on the lessons of this history as well as a unique survey of current and former national security policymakers, Desch offers concrete recommendations for scholars who want to shape government work. The result is a rich intellectual history and an essential wake-up call to a field that has lost its way.
Author: Michael C. Desch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122899X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Get Book Here
Book Description
How professionalization and scholarly “rigor” made social scientists increasingly irrelevant to US national security policy To mobilize America’s intellectual resources to meet the security challenges of the post–9/11 world, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates observed that “we must again embrace eggheads and ideas.” But the gap between national security policymakers and international relations scholars has become a chasm. In Cult of the Irrelevant, Michael Desch traces the history of the relationship between the Beltway and the Ivory Tower from World War I to the present day. Recounting key Golden Age academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling and Walt Rostow, Desch’s narrative shows that social science research became most oriented toward practical problem-solving during times of war and that scholars returned to less relevant work during peacetime. Social science disciplines like political science rewarded work that was methodologically sophisticated over scholarship that engaged with the messy realities of national security policy, and academic culture increasingly turned away from the job of solving real-world problems. In the name of scientific objectivity, academics today frequently engage only in basic research that they hope will somehow trickle down to policymakers. Drawing on the lessons of this history as well as a unique survey of current and former national security policymakers, Desch offers concrete recommendations for scholars who want to shape government work. The result is a rich intellectual history and an essential wake-up call to a field that has lost its way.
Author: Fredrik deBoer
Publisher: All Points Books
ISBN: 1250200385
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.
Author: Rupert Till
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826432360
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Explores the development of a range of cults of popular music as a response to changes in attitudes to meaning, spirituality and religion in society.>
Author: Mary Hocking
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1509819754
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
Their family has always been a living thing, its members encompassing supporting each other, confident in the indestructible bond of kinship. Murdoch and Janet Saunders, Hugh, Stephanie, Katrina, Malcolm, and Humphrey the dog. Murdoch stands at the head of the family, a highly respected novelist. But Janet is its true centre. She has guarded them all, protected them from wavering doubt and disillusion. She has always been there. Now the last of her brood has left home leaving her without a purpose. Her children plan fresh careers for her without understanding her loss. Murdoch too is undergoing some kind of transformation. Perhaps Janet, so sensitive to his writing gift, realises that this also is slipping away? Abandoned, suddenly adrift in a sea of black despair, she has no shelter, no moorings, no direction. How will she manage? How will her family manage? Unblinkingly honest, Mary Hocking's novel is warm, refreshing and utterly contemporary.
Author: Robert L. O'Connell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195080068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
From a broad, historical perspective, the dreadnought represents an archetype, and its history a kind of moral tale. Its awesome size, its formidable presence, and its immense power have gained it tremendous respect, loyalty, and, as Robert O'Connell shows in this myth-shattering book, unwarranted longevity as well. With provocative insight and wit he offers us an irreverent history of the modern battleship and its place in American history, from the sinking of the coal-fueled Maine in 1898 to the deployment of the cruise missile-armed Missouri in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The modern navies were the first of the armed services faced with fundamental and abrupt technological change. The wooden sailing ships that had fought sea battles for nearly two centuries were, in only a few years, rendered obsolete by a veritable tidal wave of innovation. With the deployment of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1903, the new technology reached its full fruition: the gigantic sleek, steel-clad, many-gunned vessel that would rule the seas (or at least the minds of Naval commanders) for years to come. O'Connell shows how other nations raced to emulate this new prototype (much in the fashion of the nuclear arms race of later decades), usually at the expense of much more effective forms of naval force. He also demonstrates compellingly the dashed expectations for the battleship occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914. While many anticipated a massive twentieth-century Trafalgar, in actuality dreadnoughts everywhere avoided battle, and when they did fight, the results were most often inconclusive or even irrelevant. With the Battle of Jutland in 1916--the only real naval showdown of the war--the ineffectiveness of the battleship as the pre-eminent weapon of war was made abundantly clear: the German navy scored on only 120 hits out of 3,597 heavy shells fired while the British had an even more dismal showing--100 out of 4,598, or a hit ratio of 2.17%. Yet, in spite of this display of impotence, the world's great naval yards continued to turn out the huge vessels. O'Connell observes that even after the heart of the American fleet was sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the almost superstitious faith in the battleship insured its survival. While they have never played a decisive role in the outcome of any modern war, they have continued to be resurrected and refurbished--even equipped with cruise missles--right up to the present day. Sacred Vessels is more than the unmasking of a false idol of naval history. It is a cautionary tale about the often unacknowledged influence of human faith, culture, and tradition on the exceedingly important, costly, and suppossedly rational process of national defense. Not only is it a gripping tale well-told, it is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the dynamics involved in the arming of nations.
Author: Joseph Menn
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 9781541762367
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our privacy, our freedom -- even democracy itself Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone. With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns. Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.
Author: Lindsey A. O'Rourke
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
O'Rourke's book offers a onestop shop for understanding foreignimposed regime change. Covert Regime Change is an impressive book and required reading for anyone interested in understanding hidden power in world politics.― Political Science Quarterly States seldom resort to war to overthrow their adversaries. They are more likely to attempt to covertly change the opposing regime, by assassinating a foreign leader, sponsoring a coup d'état, meddling in a democratic election, or secretly aiding foreign dissident groups. In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O'Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on overt cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O'Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Offensive operations aim to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. Preventive operations seek to stop a state from taking certain actions, such as joining a rival alliance, that may make them a future security threat. Hegemonic operations try to maintain a hierarchical relationship between the intervening state and the target government. Despite the prevalence of covert attempts at regime change, most operations fail to remain covert and spark blowback in unanticipated ways. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O'Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?
Author: Peter Hounam
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780856488375
Category : Cults
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Author: Dave Arnott
Publisher: Amacom Books
ISBN: 9780814404935
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Argues that some companies are using cult-like tactics to make employees dedicate themselves to the company at the expense of private life and community
Author: R. E. Witt
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801856426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
The first study to document the extent and complexity of the cult's influence on Graeco-Roman and early Christian culture, R. E. Witt's acclaimed Isis in the Ancient World is now available in paperback Worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis dates as far back as 2500 B.C. and extended at least until the fifth century A.D. throughout the Roman world. The importance of her cult is attested to in Apuleius's Golden Ass, and evidence of its influence has been found in places as far apart as Afghanistan and Portugal, the Black Sea and northern England. The first study to document the extent and complexity of the cult's influence on Graeco-Roman and early Christian culture, R. E. Witt's acclaimed Isis in the Ancient World is now available in paperback.
