Dogs and students and this moment

Rose, in Breckenridge.

I am a political scientist. I have spent the last 30+ years studying security, including war and how to best manage violence. Today when I picked up the paper (or the NYT app on my phone, actually), I skimmed past the headlines on the US and Israeli war with Iran and read get a dog, live longer.

It is a tough time to be a political scientist. The Trump administration stripped universities of funds for research that was not showing how awesome America was (quite a bit it turns out). It has also targeted universities for treating underrepresented people like actual humans. And it is investigating many more universities to ensure they don’t treat underrepresented people like actual humans in the future. All this comes as universities begin to slip off the demographic cliff. Faced with this, academic administrations that weren’t that great in the first place – mostly focused on metrics and whether they are meeting them rather than engaging with the actual faculty and students on campus – are floundering.

But there is more. All those studies where we carefully made assumptions, measured, and ran sophisticated models to understand the world? Well, the world has gone batshit crazy ceased to abide by our assumptions. To be honest, I am on record arguing that some of that is our fault. Some parts of the discipline have aimed for a certainty that is not possible in the human world and thus built an apparatus on “rigorous” but shaky grounds.

Even more realistic studies built upon more modest claims (or at least entertaining uncertainty between the lines), are faltering because fundamental elements of what we have taken for granted in the US have shifted or frayed in ways that few thought possible. When a reasonably reliable website reports claims that a commander told troops not to worry because this is “all part of God’s divine plan” to “cause Armageddon”, we are in a world that few social scientists saw coming. Actually, those writing on the Global Right Wing and the World of the Right did, but even they did not imagine that neoroyalism would bring it to a whole new level.

More importantly, how do we weigh in when the fundamentals of social science – logic, evidence, and all that – seem to carry so little sway? I have found it hard to work on articles and even my nearly finished book manuscript (who, after all, is going to read a book on Pragmatic Pathways to (Good Enough) Global Governance at this moment?) Though I appreciate the efforts of those who are trying to make sense of the cacophony on various blogs, and read Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell religiously, I have had a hard time writing because I feel like I am just preaching to the converted.

Teaching has seemed more meaningful. I have mostly found teaching to be uplifting this term as my MA students are genuinely concerned with what is happening and take have taken a course on Foundations of Security (centered on a broadly construed notion of the security dilemma and revolving around questions about security for whom, security from what, and security through what means) incredibly seriously. If I have hope for the future, it comes from interacting with these students.

I began to struggle a bit as I was reading drafts of their policy memos, though. How should I advise those writing to people at the White House – especially after hearing reporters who cover the White House explain how it is working under Trump. A fundamental principle in policy memo writing is to know your audience, what they care about, and how they think to be able to persuade them to act. I found myself telling them to appeal to what Trump would care about, which has little to do with anything that would pass muster in social science.

It was our penultimate class this week that really burst my bubble. We read an article by Erica Chenoweth and Laura Dugan, showing evidence that Israel was more likely to reduce terrorist violence when it rewarded non-violence, offering conciliation to disaffected Palestinians, than when it punished them for violence. The general sentiment from the class was: “sounds nice, won’t happen”. Conciliation “takes too long”, “will not be accepted by public opinion”, “will be seen as rewarding bad behavior”. Terrorism demands a beefy response no matter the evidence of effectiveness. One student quipped, “I get it, I am on team get something done”. When I pressed, “even if it doesn’t work?” the student replied “yes”.

My heart sank and the teaching that had seemed so uplifting all term took on a different light. Already, and even without recognizing it, these students are accepting limits that logic, evidence, and reason cannot erode. Their entire adult lives have unfolded in the shadow of Trump, and it has shaped what they think of the public and what is possible in politics. As ridiculous as they think the war in Iran is – and they do think it is ridiculous – trudging on in the face of the ridiculous in politics, taking it in stride, maybe even adopting elements of it, is central of their world.  

I am not yet sure what to do about that. I am guessing it will require changes in how we both practice and teach political science (alongside humanities and social science more generally). But after I considered whether I should get another dog, it led me to write a blog post for the first time since January 2025 and resolve to bring my dog next week so she can spread her magic to these students.