Mira Sucharov

Security Ethics and the Modern Military: The Case of the Israel Defense Forces:

The rise to the fore of realist ontologies in international relations has meant that ethical issues have been associated more with evaluation than explanation. Yet ignoring the constitutive role of morality and ethics in structuring security policy choices leaves us without a complete understanding of the causes and consequences of international behavior. Accordingly, this article seeks to transplant the role of ethics from the realm of evaluative to empirical theory by introducing the idea of a security ethic, referring to the state’s—and by extension the military’s—normative attitudes toward the use of organized violence, including under what circumstances it is ethically permissible to use force at all, and the manner in which force can be justly employed in a given military operation. The article develops this framework by reference to the historical security outlook of the Israel Defense Forces.

Blogging identities on israel/palestine: Public intellectuals and their audiences

Drawing on our research and blogging on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we make three claims about the role of scholar-bloggers in the social media age. First, as scholar-bloggers with some degree of ethno-national attachments related to our area of expertise, we contend that we are well positioned to issue the kinds of critiques that may resonate more deeply due to the very subjectivity that some perceive as a liability. Second, through the melding of scholarly arguments with popular writing forms, scholar-bloggers are uniquely poised to be at the forefront of public engagement and political literacy both with social media publics and with students. Third, the subjectivity hazard is an intrinsic part of any type of research and writing, whether that writing is aimed at a scholarly audience or any other, and should not be used as an argument against academic involvement in social media. Ultimately, subjectivities of both consumers and producers can evolve through these highly interactive media, a dynamic that deserves further examination. The explosion of social media in the last half decade has raised a number of questions about the place of academics in the digital sphere, especially those engaged in the fields of politics and international affairs. For many active citizens, academics included, social media—including blogs, Twitter, and even Facebook—is now the default channel for consuming, discussing, and analyzing news and current events. Increasingly, scholars active in these arenas contend that they are an effective means of teaching, research, and dissemination of knowledge (Carpenter and Drezner 2010; Pressman 2012; Sides 2011). Similarly, surveys of the discipline indicate that academics are coming to believe that blogging should count toward tenure and promotion decisions alongside traditional publications (Long et al. 2012, 64, 69).1 Writing in PS as a response to John Sides (2011), Robert Farley (2013) has reflected on the growing acceptance of blogging as legitimate political science. While he agrees that the discipline should provide “incentives” for faculty members who blog (e.g., tenure and promotion), Farley argues that trying to fold blogging too much into the discipline’s existing structures runs the risk of imposing rigid conditions and qualifications on bloggers that undermine the very benefits inherent in the nature of blogging (and, in our view, by extension tweeting, writing op-eds, and other social media engagement). We share Farley’s view. But including blogging and other social media activity as “legitimate” political science scholarship opens the door to another possible concern, which, while it is has always been present in more traditional publishing venues, may be intensified by these nontraditional activities: the intrusion of a scholar’s own nonacademic identity (whether ethnic, religious, racial, gender, or simply ideological leanings) into the give-and-take that marks social media activity. Whereas some people might argue that blogging and other social media engagement may challenge the roles and duties of academics (Tribble 2005), we contend that blogging and other types of social media activity paired with reflexive awareness of the kind of subjectivity that guides one’s endeavors may actually enhance the scholarly and teaching enterprise. What’s more, the traditional role of scholar-teacher as sage-on-a-stage may be well worth challenging. Drawing on the issue-areas that guide our own particular research and blogging agenda—Israel, Jewish affairs, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—we make three claims in this essay. First, as scholar-bloggers with some ethno-national attachments surrounding our area of expertise, we contend that we are well positioned to issue the kinds of critiques that may resonate more deeply within our communities because of our status as individuals with significant group attachments. This, despite the Mira Sucharov is associate professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She can be reached at mira.sucharov@carleton.ca. Brent E. Sasley is associate professor of political science at the University ofTexas at Arlington. He can be reached at bsasley@uta.edu. T h e P r o f e s s i o n ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. doi:10.1017/S1049096513001571

History, Rationality, Narrative, Imagery: A Four-Way Conversation on Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

The Arab-Israeli conflict can be a difficult topic to teach, for a variety of reasons. As such, this article represents a conversation by four scholar-teachers of the Middle East and the conflict about our approaches to teaching it. We discuss our motivations for the manner in which we teach the conflict and some of the specific tools we use to do so, including the use of history, role-playing and simulations, emphasis on narratives, and active learning instruments (such as movies and music). We also engage with each other, interspersing our own suggestions and reactions to each others discussion. By doing so, we aim to provide an open atmosphere for others to consider how we teach the conflict, in the hopes of better understanding it.