Posted 3:03 PM by Andy
Another two weeks have elapsed, so it's time to take a barometric reading of my mind.

"Renaissance Diplomacy". The development of diplomatic service from the 14th to the late 17th century. Concomitant with the flourishing of the arts in the Renaissance in Italy, the origins of diplomacy emerged. A combination of factors, chief of which was its geographic isolation, led to the development of warring nation states within the Italian peninsula. At the time, international law consisted of juristic tradition and Roman civic law, and a set of customs guided the practice of legations and proconsular missions. With the internecine warfare, the embassies became more sophisticated and full-fledged in its functions. The main function of embassies was to gather intelligence and transmit it back home. Accusations of espionage enveloped most embassies. Diplomatic immunity protected travelling ambassadors from harassment in the execution of their public duties, including debt collection and prosecution for minor legal infringements. Outright conspiratorial activity was condemned. With the threat of external aggression from the European states, Italian city-states banded together in an uneasy alliance. With the religious wars and the geopolitical manuverings on the larger continent, many states joined forces in a stand against France. By the end of this period, modern diplomacy and the formation of the balance of power state system had been established. There are some obvious conflicts of interest in those who are engaged as diplomats. "A man sent to lie abroad for his country's sake" is a quote laden with a double-entendre asserting the role of the ambassador. Then there is the question of the ultimate claim of his allegiance: namely, his own prince, his accredited sovereign, or world peace. Finally, the ambassador's main role is of an agent or mouthpiece, tasked to execute the policies of his government. For the most part, he lacks policy-making authority.

"Functions of International Law." Survey of the design of the international system, its intentions and flaws. The main point is that there is no enforcement or judicial system to either prosecute or punish offenders because the state-actors will always revert back to their own national interests when a point of contention arises over international law. An equally telling fact is that even though there is equal representation accorded the various actors, the strong countries politically and militarily unquestionably have the stronger vote.

"The Red Count." Life of Harry Kessler. His life defied classification but his two main vocations were art patron and diplomat for Germany during the years surrounding the Great War. There is a healthy dose of history spliced into this account of his life. There is further evidence here that the enjoyment of an ambassador depends greatly on the significance of the mission to which he is attached. If you are out of favor with the ruling party, you may be occupying a post in name only.

"Increasing Faculty Diversity." The book examines the root causes and factors contributing to the dearth of minority faculty at the university level. Evidence is presented isolating possible factors like SAT performance, socio-economic status, parental educational level, freshman interest, attitudes towards the profession, faculty contact, college grades, and school environment to explain the low numbers of minorities that enter the academy. Lots of interesting facts emerge from this study, for example, Asians (high-achieving since the authors sampled students with criteria that indicated high achievement) enter college with physician as the overwhelming occupational choice. Other less surprising and well documented results are African-Americans and Latinos perform worse in college relative to whites and Asians controlling for previous academic record (comparing students with similar SAT and high-school GPAs.) A more controversial conclusion is affirmative action actually hurt minorites' chances from entering the academy because they allow students with scores 200 points below the average white or Asian student to be enrolled into a selective university. This in effect undermines their performance because they are less well prepared than their peers. The main thesis of the book is that the scarcity of minority professors is not due to the hiring policies of institutions to discriminate against them, but due to the small available pool of qualified candidates. The authors make policy recommendations that will counteract this phenomenon including abolishing affirmative action, helping minority students to perform better in college, steering students from medicine into academia (assuming that medicine, business, and law compete with academia as career choices), and increasing research opportunities for students. One table that amused me contained a graph that shows grades negatively correlated with those who want to enter business as a profession. In other words, the worse the students' grades were, the more likely they were to favor the business life.

"World On Fire." This primer on the effects of globalization examines the underside of the spread of free markets and democratization. Written by a Yale Law professor, who happens to be Chinese-Filipino, it argues that with the massive push for trade liberalization, wealth is only concentrated in the hands of a few elite outsiders or an ethnic minority. This fuels discontent and ethnic hatred which bubbles beneath the surface until a demagogue emerges that inflames these sentiments. She proffers examples from Latin America, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Jewish oligarchs in Russia, and Africa to make her case. Increasingly I'm not as idealistic about the ameliorating effects of free trade to increase economic standards on an even scale, but I don't see any other alternative. Colonization is always ugly because it destroys indigenous cultures and practices, but the force of globalization is inexorable and the spoils will go to the opportunistic or entreprenuerial.

Articles on China and Taiwan. I am focusing my research paper for my international law class on the issues surrounding the political unification of the PRC and Taiwan. I need to weave the themes of sovereignty, the conception of "Greater China" encompassing trade and culture, historical treaty terms from the end of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the claims of indigenous peoples to self-determination, and comparative national interest considerations to present the ambiguous legal status of Taiwan. I hope to draw some likely future scenarios, but as has been hammered into me repeatedly by my professor, legality has no force if it's not backed by political or military might. In other words, if the local government on Taiwan cannot defend its territory, then any claims to legitimacy and independence is moot.

People. WL, brother of KL. He is an computer science student at Rochester Institute of Technology doing a co-op in Syracuse. We connected on our engineering pedigree and also on our mutual interest in basketball. DO is a joint IR and library science student. We discuss information policy and its role in democratization of a society. I agree with him that the access to information and the ability to voice your opinions in open forums are all key ingredients to a thriving democratic polity. JD is a IR student who I chatted with over our stat problem set. As a former political science major, he holds a low opinion of the intelligence of students who pursue such studies. I tried to disabuse him of that view to no avail.

Ball. Imagine you're Ruben Patterson. You're the 8th or 9th guy in the rotation for the Portland Trailblazers, a team loaded with athletic talent. You know you have skills and chomp at the bit to get into the game, knowing you will likely get about 20 minutes on any given night. Can anyone blame you if you enter the game jacking up shots and trying to score quickly? In essence, you're a hired gun. If you don't produce almost immediately, you're yanked and will ride the pine for the rest of the game. I know how guys like RP feels. On my IM team I'm the 6th man or 7th man depending on how many people show up. I have gotten about 15 minutes the first game and 10 minutes the second game. I am 0 for 4 in those two games. I don't want to complain because it's not my team and I don't want to be selfish, but can you fault me for wanting more playing time? I am seriously debating the value of staying on this team. I have more fun playing pickup because the amount of time I stay on the court is dictated at least partially by my performance. In other news, I witnessed All-Star Saturday night yesterday. Peja, as expected, took the 3-point shooting crown. The slam-dunk competition came down to a duel between JRich and Desmond Mason, two former champions. Although JRich executed his lob-pass dunks to perfection with his excellent hang-time and pulled out a spectacular dunk to win it, I still like Mason's dunks better. They were stylistically more beautiful to me. His first was the rock-the-baby cradle jam a la Jordan in his early years. The next one was a leaner taking off from the right side of the lane with the left hand, spread the legs for effect. His third dunk electrified the crowd. It was a between-the-legs tomahawk with the left hand. The announcers and the guy that watched this with me all exclaimed in unison, "That's sick." I don't know how much creativity there is left for people to extend the dunk contest, but that one dunk was worth the whole hype and build-up. The "What is Love?" commercial. The longest running version of this runs two minutes and is a montage of MJ from his rookie to Wizard days that is inspiring and chilling at the same time. He has personal shortcomings like the rest of us, (I'll do a comparative analysis of MJ versus Jesus next time) but his basketball dominance and competitive desire is unparalleled.

Next time: campus involvement (will I be a mediator, work on a grant proposal to speed technology commercialization, or be more involved with church ministries?), possible responses from internship requests, Valentine's Day.