Academics are a conflicted lot, simultaneously cherishing and bemoaning their isolation from the world. Pursuing the life of the mind necessarily entails cultivating independence and even detachment from politics, the news cycle, and government policy. Yet detachment can easily become irrelevance, and in recent years, there has been a tidal wave of concern—from academics and non-academics alike—that international relations scholarship has become ever more remote from the affairs of state.In a Washington Post op-ed written in 2009, Harvard scholar and former policymaker Joseph Nye warned of a “growing gap” between academics and government.1 A contemporaneous study concluded that “the walls …read more
Source: The American Interest
