Joseph Huddleston

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YouTube video by Senator Cory Booker President Trump is Making America Less Safe | Senator Cory Booker’s long speech to the U.S. Senate

I am spending my sabbatical year working on Cory Booker's foreign policy team. What he pulled off with his 25-hr speech was extraordinary. I feel proud and incredibly privileged to have contributed.

Here's a bit of the national security section my team worked on: youtu.be/GnKDC5xzAi0?...

This is lovely, Steve. Brandon was a great colleague, and we are really feeling the loss at SHU School of Diplomacy. He got a lot done in his two short years here, including taking over as director of DiploLab and coauthoring several pieces with students.

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Thank you, Sebastian!

Link for free access (can be used 50 times total):
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6AZGX...

Andrea, I agree with you, and we grappled with this question a lot. Our framework leaves room for mindful advocacy.

Here's my thread from last week: bsky.app/profile/joeh...

Best place to read rebel marketing is Cliff Bob's work, one of the originals on the topic.

Interesting thing to consider re:terrorism. I guess it depends on whether we treat "terrorist" as merely a slur versus an empirical descriptor. A lot of these groups do use terrorism as one of their tactics.

Conflict, Security & Development Research Ethics and the Study of Armed Actors. Volume 24, Issue 6 of Conflict, Security & Development

All this, and many other good articles, in CSD's latest special issue on Ethics and the Study of Armed Actors. www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccsd20/2...
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Text excerpt from Huang and Huddleston's "Are we marketing rebellion?"

Finally, we don't think these concerns mean all rebel marketing is bad. Sometimes, the rebels might be better than the state and legitimizing them might be straightforwardly ethical. That's a separate debate. We just want conflict scholars to intentionally think about this ethical consideration.
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Text excerpt from Huang and Huddleston's "Are we marketing rebellion?"

We don't have complete answers to the question of what to do about this. Definitely don't stop doing research. But DO think about how your work is useful to these actors, and DO be aware of biases built into your data collection during fieldwork.
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Text excerpt from Huang and Huddleston's "Are we marketing rebellion?"

Moreover, many scholars are incentivized to write for larger audiences, so these effects can be magnified. And rebel leaders themselves read and cite our work more than you might think, and may directly use it in their marketing efforts.
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Text excerpt from Huang and Huddleston's "Are we marketing rebellion?"

Next, this might be true even if scholars' (and journalists') coverage is negative, or normatively condemnatory. It can still raise their profiles and give them bargaining leverage, like it did severe abuse by rebels in the DRC.
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Text excerpt from Huang and Huddleston's "Are we marketing rebellion?"

I don't like long threads, so let me keep it punchy. Our first point is that scholarship on rebels can be useful as rebel legitimation. Our work sometimes inadvertently plays into their hands, and conflict scholars need to think about how.
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Abstract of Huang and Huddleston's article "Are we marketing rebellion?"

Cliff Bob's book famously put journalism, TV, and other media in the category of marketing by rebel groups, but what about scholarship? Does it matter that our research is sometimes useful to violent nonstate actors? When and how is scholarship useful to them, and what can scholars do about it?
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Are we marketing rebellion? Is studying civil war contributing to civil war? Rebel groups often expend significant resources building up international support and legitimacy for their cause. At the same time, much of conflict...

New publication!

@reyhuang.bsky.social and I ask a tough ethical question of ourselves and conflict scholars: Are we marketing rebellion?

A few years ago, we discovered we both were grappling with this question. doi.org/10.1080/1467...
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I've seen plenty of AI slop, and I too, hate it. And very much agreed about writing=thinking. But that's not the point in question here, is it?

But I didn't see @afinetheorem.bsky.social advocating writing substitution use cases. It seems clear to me it's designed to complement instruction.

But I get that others are worried that admin will then saddle me with a 4-4, not hire people. etc. I also worry about that.

It does seem like it wouldn't help much at all in writing classes, but seems great for my methods class, even parts of my conflict class.

If a chat can answer the midnight qs like "When is our final?" and "Which assignment counts the most?", my life would get easier. 3-3 is a lot of work!

a close up of a man wearing a shirt and tie smiling ALT: a close up of a man wearing a shirt and tie smiling

It's what everyone hates me for!

Initial 2 reactions.

Good: Wow, an AI that has read my syllabus and all my slides/readings will probably give better answers to my students than rando internet AIs at 3am.

Evil: Wow, a lot of people think this AI could replace TAs. I guess we finally have a solution to the overproduction of PhDs.

It's real colleagues, who are behaving as trolls and undermining any conversation about their important and (perhaps) dire point. Like he said, it's an empirical question, but all I see is assertion w/o evidence.

This tool looks useful for at least a few courses at my R2 (where there's no TAs).

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Someone please help Mr Lizard get Big Scooter to make things right (preferably not Luigi-style).

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Holy cow, when was the last time a state collapsed this fast under rebel group pressure?

Thanks for this rec 📌

Perfect way to kick off Thanksgiving weekend (and preburn a few thousand calories, Denny's Cove, Tennessee) #climbsky

This looks great. Every time I go to Jordan, I wonder how the king is so popular (and whether it's an illusion). Will get a copy.