Best of the week - 2 October 2020
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Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for IR-related content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world.
COVID-related news
- Female voices are drowned out on COVID-19 says a new report. Read Karen McVeigh in the Guardian
- One million and counting. Are COVID-19 figures worse than reported? Find out in the Economist
Brexit and UK politics
- Britain and Ireland, North and South. Read this long report from Cathy Gormley-Heenan in UK in a Changing Europe
- All protests are not equal in the eyes of the police. Read Douglas Murray in the Spectator
- When dogma beats data, reason is lost. Matthew Syed in the Times.
The election and US politics
- How will Trump react if Biden prevails? Read Stephen Collinson for CNN politics
- ‘I feel sorry for Americans.’ A baffled world watches the US. Hannah Beech investigates world views for The New York Times
- ‘This is how you normalise a madman’ Trump and his authoritarian threat. Read Lisa Newcomb in Common Dreams
- Trump’s praetorian guard. Read Jonathan Stevenson in the New York Review of Books
- An investigation into far right militia groups by Mike Giglio for the Atlantic
- RBG’s big mistake. Read Frederick Wilmot-Smith in the London Review of Books
- The President’s taxes. Trump’s chronic losses and years of tax avoidance. Report by Russ Beutther, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire for the New York Times
- Jo Biden brought a sponge to a knife fight. Sam Leith in Unherd
- The transformation of diplomacy. How to save the State Department. Read analysis from William J. Burns and Linda Thomas-Greenfield in Foreign Affairs
- All the President’s men. The art of power and James Baker. Interesting book review on James Baker in the Economist
- Podcast: Listen to Helen Thompson and Gary Gerstle on the historical precedents for US presidents losing office after a single term. It doesn't happen very often, but it could be about to happen again! From TALKING POLITICS
- Podcast: Listen to six takeaways from the first presidential debate. Chaos and contempt from The Daily Podcast.
Middle East and North Africa
- What exactly is happening in Libya? Shahed Ezaydi for Open Democracy
- Raising tensions with Iran. What’s Pompeo doing? asks David Ignatius for the Washington Post
- UK is ‘turning a blind eye' to Saudi war crimes in Yemen says Middle East Eye.
Education/academia
- Beyond IR’s ivory tower: The world needs experts to engage with policy more than ever. Cullen Hendrix, Julia MacDonald, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers and Michael J. Tierney in Foreign Affairs
- Distain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice says Michael J. Sandel in the New York Times
- Are graduates doomed? Read James Bloodworth’s point of view in Unherd
- Podcast: Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani discuss the wave of lockdowns at British universities from Novara Media.
In other news
- History shows revolutions are a disaster. Richard Whatmore for Engelsberg Ideas.
- Braving the goblets of fire. Nick Cohen for the Critic.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
