Plans for the week

I will be flying to Seattle tomorrow to attend the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, so blogging for the rest of the week will be light. I’m on a roundtable discussion of John Ikenberry’s new book Liberal Leviathan, and plan to offer some friendly but provocative points about the book. I’m also ...

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Stephen M. Walt
By , a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

I will be flying to Seattle tomorrow to attend the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, so blogging for the rest of the week will be light. I'm on a roundtable discussion of John Ikenberry's new book Liberal Leviathan, and plan to offer some friendly but provocative points about the book. I'm also running for the APSA Council, as part of a broad effort to democratize its governance structures, encourage more open elections, and support efforts to make academic political science more attentive to real-world policy issues.

I will be flying to Seattle tomorrow to attend the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, so blogging for the rest of the week will be light. I’m on a roundtable discussion of John Ikenberry’s new book Liberal Leviathan, and plan to offer some friendly but provocative points about the book. I’m also running for the APSA Council, as part of a broad effort to democratize its governance structures, encourage more open elections, and support efforts to make academic political science more attentive to real-world policy issues.

But the really important shift this week is a structural change in my home life.  As of tomorrow, I move from the multi-polar system in which I’ve lived for the past sixteen years to a tri-polar world. Translation: my wife and I are taking my eldest son off to college, with pride and high hopes and every nickel we can scrape together.  I just hope that the gloom-and-doom accounts of U.S. higher education that I’ve been reading lately are overly pessimistic.

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt

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