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This is a smart piece by Daniel Drezner on how Daniel Diermeier and Vanderbilt University’s political accommodation to the Trump era has ended up – even if popular with donors and a subset of parents – leading to bizarre and unworkable understandings of academic freedom. It seems like Vandy has decided Trumpism is the new normal and the only appropriate response is to fully accept its critique of higher ed (as opposed to acknowledging serious problems, but not entirely giving in).

If Trump’s approach to higher ed becomes hegemonic, then this will be justified as a clever tacking to the wind to aid Vanderbilt’s mission to move up the rankings; if instead it fragments and falters (perhaps in the face of a midterm wave or the 2028 election), then it will look like a craven miscalculation.

The post quotes a piece by Inside Higher Ed‘s John K. Wilson:

“Absolutely none of these extraordinary measures are “standard academic processes.” They are clear attacks on shared governance and academic freedom, and they are direct violations of institutional neutrality because the administration is favoring one ideological side in academic disputes over another. . . . the Vanderbilt declaration goes far beyond what the Trump administration dreamed of proposing for colleges, imposing an extreme attack on academic freedom, shared governance, international scholars, and free speech that may be unmatched in the history of statements by American college boards.”

Drezner concludes:
“Rather than embracing more restrictions on such speech, it sure would be great if Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier — a political scientist no less [Paul note: Diermeier’s time at UChicago was not great on the “broad-minded initiatives for the greater good” front, as opposed to the “move fast and break things in order to quickly become a university president, regardless what messes end up being left behind for others to deal with” front]— read Levy’s article. Because as much as Vanderbilt’s trustees might lament the decline of trust in universities, this kind of overt interference into the daily lives of academic will simply rode that trust even further.”

Whenever I teach my PLSC 26800 class (originally “Insurgency, Terrorism, and Civil War” and now “Political Violence”), I wander over to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Peace Research Institute of Oslo websites to update my slides on trends in armed conflict. UCDP has particularly useful maps and graphs.

This year, PRIO has published a very valuable report that summarizes trends in armed conflict and battle-related deaths. Looking at its summary of battle-related deaths since 1989 and 1946 (see both figures below), we can see a lull in the 2001-2011 period that is quite striking. At the time – with 9/11, the Iraq war, etc – it certainly didn’t feel that way, but it now appears to have been the most peaceful period of the post-Cold War era by quite a margin.

Their (grim) conclusion:
“This PRIO Paper confirms that the level of violence is increasing, that this now is part of a longer trend and not just a peak, and that a new, higher baseline of global violence has emerged. 2025 was the third most deadly year since the end of the Cold War, and we see that the period post 2013 has overall been more violent than the period prior to 2013 during the Cold War era”

One of the courses I regularly teach is a discussion-based, “great books”-esque seminar built around a small number of texts. I used to primarily evaluate students based on 3 take-home papers and class participation. In the AI era, those papers are incredibly easy to quickly outsource to Claude or ChatGPT (they are very well-equipped to answer “Locke and Hobbes: compare and contrast!”-style questions).

In the last couple of years I’ve been experimenting with trying to maintain skill-building in writing while dramatically expanding the oral/interpersonal side of the course. Below is my current (draft, changeable) cut at the course requirements that might be useful for those grappling with these issues:

I will also be teaching a mid-sized lecture class in which lots of oral exams are not scalable. Below is how I am approaching the assignments for that course, with a focus on in-class activities but also a take-home paper:

A good piece by David Wallace-Wells on how growing technological precision in warfare has not actually led to growing precision or limitation in the targeting of warfare. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about as I revise my undergrad Political Violence class for the fall and thinking about future research areas – the blurring of categories of war (internal/external, criminal/political), the blurring of technologies (drones are now heavily used in African civil wars, for instance) , the blurring distinctions between war and normal politics (how precisely would be categorize pro-Iranian militias in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen?). Some salient passages:

“All around the world, civilian power supply — technically off-limits, according to international law, wherever that still applies — has become a “frontline target” in a new kind of conflict, four experts wrote in the report, published last month. Electricity plants, substations, transmission grids — military planners have always taken note of these systems, along with hospitals and water systems and other logistical features of civilian infrastructure. But for decades it has been rare for great powers to openly target energy supply, and often a kind of humanitarian outrage followed when anyone did, which meant that a broad expectation of civility prevailed. “Such sanctuary,” the authors of the West Point report wrote, “is over.” Energy infrastructure has become a much more common target, particularly as conflicts drag on in regions temptingly full of power plants and pipelines. “All of a sudden,” says Morgan Bazilian, an energy-systems scholar at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines and an author of the report, “our distaste for anything outside of the rules of war doesn’t look all that strong.” . . . .

There are more wars than there used to be — worldwide, the number of conflicts has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. These wars are bloodier, too, with the annual death toll more than twice as high in the 2020s as it was in the 2010s and nearly five times as high as in the 2000s. . . . .

In certain ways, drones have made war more precise. But they have also helped widen the scope of conflict. The front may be effectively frozen, but Ukrainian drones are now frequently striking Russian energy targets that not very long ago seemed not simply too far to reach but beyond the pale as well. Between 2022 and 2024, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure roughly doubled. . . .

In Iran, we are seeing something different — not just energy warfare but energy war, a conflict fought over and within energy markets, with military operations designed primarily to shape global prices and global supply of fuel. . . . .”

A thoughtful piece by Asfandyar Mir on how Pakistan has situated itself in the Iran-US war:

“as both the Biden and Trump administrations have learned at great cost, modern conflicts cannot be walled off. Alliance-centric strategies, which promise that pooling the military and economic weight of many states will deter threats and, if necessary, defeat adversaries, have proved incapable of preventing or ending wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. In a disordered world, that rigid approach is a liability. Creating pockets of stability requires flexibility of the kind practiced by Pakistan and its peers. . . .

To foster relationships with these mediators, the United States must show the same willingness to cross divides that the mediators themselves have displayed. Until 2024, a near consensus in Washington held that because the United States needed strong ties with India to balance China, it would have to shut out Pakistan. Trump defied that logic and took a personal interest in the relationship with Islamabad. When the crisis came, that departure proved valuable.”

Saheb Singh Chadha has a new Carnegie-India report out on understanding current trends in Indian policy toward China. He argues:

“Four key imperatives guide India’s approach to China at this moment. This section explains each imperative, why it arises, and how the Government of India is pursuing its interests in its engagement with China. The four imperatives are:

The need to keep a channel open with Beijing amidst the churn in regional and global geopolitics driven by a change in U.S. foreign policy.

India’s necessity of managing the disputed border with China, that is resolving the standoff in eastern Ladakh, formulating new border management protocols, and settling the boundary question;

India’s economic challenges and opportunities with China, including supply chain and trade vulnerabilities, and China’s potential as a source of capital and technological investment;

New Delhi’s attempt to develop a new political understanding with Beijing in the aftermath of the breakdown in Sino-Indian political relations in 2020

The need to keep a channel open with Beijing amidst the churn in regional and global geopolitics driven by a change in U.S. foreign policy.”