Why subscribe?
This newsletter takes its name from a passage in The Education of Henry Adams that I read in New York City twenty or more years ago:
The New Englander, whether boy or man, in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of hating; his joys were few. Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate.
I chose the passage when I was a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Even though I now work in Qatar, the passage still feels almost prophetic—both personally and about what politics has become again.
This newsletter will be a personal view—my view, mostly—of the study of politics and international relations. I’ll talk about what it’s like to be a professor, what I’m researching, and what I’m reading in other people’s research.
I publish this approximately “when I can”—somewhere between twice a week and twice a month.
Who am I?
I’m a political scientist specializing in international relations and foreign policy. I work at a university (but this newsletter is very much not affiliated with them and represents nobody’s views but my own, if it even represents my own views).
