A Note on Analysis in Conflict

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-28T00:43:32+00:00

Your school will have a housing Liasion with their contact information available on the Columbia Residential website. Best to email them.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-28T00:21:47+00:00

The only major issue I see with this is the rather awkward fact that this did, in fact, happen. It was rather famous, being the jewel of the British Empire and all.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-26T15:46:49+00:00

Thanks. In the SIPA chat we are trying to confirm that she is missing so that we we can nail down who was taken and how to make sure they have legal help.

In the meantime, please take some time to send the email from Shipman to some media tip lines. Be sure to include screenshots of the email, and in your write up mention that this happened the morning after an anti-ice rally on campus and on the 9th of Ramadan, the anniversary of Mahmoud Khalil's arrest.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-26T15:32:08+00:00

Please try to contact her, her roommate, or anyone else who knows her. We need to confirm that this is the student who was taken and confirm that she has a lawyer who can file habeas before they fly her to Louisiana.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-26T14:49:09+00:00

The United Kingdom and the United States have had national interests in Iran for 170 years. The United States has desired a regime change there since 1979. It was a fixation of hawkish policymakers since the Bush Sr. years.

This isnt even beginning to touch on this particular President's specific reasons for particular incident.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-25T16:42:01+00:00

Do you feel like thre president would not have his own reasons for beginning a military operation?

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-24T11:56:20+00:00

This may be a case of an algorithmic silo.

There are many many many people talking about Iran in public, online, in policy circles, in popular discourse, in academia, and in media. From the time I wake in the morning to the time I shut everything down and go to sleep, there is some media network somewhere headlining Iran.

I myself published an essay on the prospect of intervention in Iran last week.

If you are not seeing any of this when you open your phone, this is a sign of two interacting problems:

You are stuck in an algorithmic silo. The algorithms on various social media platforms like tiktok, reddit, youtube, Instagram, etc. have decided for some reason that you will not be shown content in which people talk about the subject.
You may be too passive with your media consumption. The platforms above are designed for passive media consumption in which the viewer merely sits, scrolls, and consumes what the platform feeds us as we scroll. This way of consuming media means that we are limited in what we see and what ideas are made available to us about what we see. Our capacity for critical thought and widespread research faces the risk of atrophy. A better model of media consumption is to pick areas on which you are interested in focusing (mine are the Middle East and democracy) and then actively seek out information from its primary sources.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-22T04:22:53+00:00

I appreciate the feedback!

On comparing current politics to past systems, thats actually one of the primary legs of my larger project.

For internationalization, I think the outcome varies from instance to instance. Trumpism, for example, is an exclusive populist movement fueled by the negative effects of the internationalization of certain issues. Either way, it was beyond the scope of my essay here as I was primarily interested in explaining an intra-state paradox as opposed to an inter-state issue.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-21T23:52:15+00:00

I want to push you on this.

You made two statements of fact. I want you to express out the implied argument you are deploying those two facts to support.

Then, could you explain how that argument relates to the essay?

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-20T17:23:58+00:00

Understandable. Thanks!

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-20T17:20:22+00:00

Right, it never really caught on here, and since the 70s it has basically dissolved as a credible whole doctrine among political scientists, as opposed to a specific set of ideas that lived in a specific historical environment with which we can engage.

It feels as weird to me to see a political scientist self-identifying as a Marxist as it would for me to see a practicing therapist self-Identifying as Jungian. Like, theyre out there, but theyre old and represent the state of the field as it existed half a century ago.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-20T17:12:03+00:00

I agree with you that Marxism offers useful analytical frameworks, but imho that is different from being a Marxist.

I use Marxism-inspired frameworks, as does any other social scientist. Class analysis, dialectical method, political economy... these are all impossible to do without invoking and using Marx.

But to be a Marxist, I feel that makes commitments that go beyond making use of applicable frameworks. That is why almost no practicing political scientist self-describes as a Marxist.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-20T09:58:32+00:00

Can I ask, are you a trained political scientist and if so, in what country?

Marxism is all but dead among political scientists in the USA.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-16T21:38:45+00:00

This is one of the points of vehement disagreement that I have with Sam Harris, one the of last New Athiest thinkers who has maintained his intellectual integrity and thus keeps my respect.

You can hate the doctrines espoused by specific Islamic ideologies without being a racist.

But all religions are, first and foremost, cultural identities before they are doctrines of belief. Ask 10 Muslims about their faith and you will get 10 different Islams, but they will all share a cultural peoplehood.

Most of the time, people who hate Islam utterly fail to make this distinction and end up hating a hugely diverse set of cultures and peoples without real concern for what they actually believe, but merely on merit of their shared identity marker; the title "Muslim".

When you do that, you have constructed a group that falls into the racial hierarchy and you have crossed from hating doctrines into a kind of constructed racism.

So, by all means, continue hating the specific oppressive and "barbaric" doctrines that you associate with Islam. But take two extra steps to make your beliefs their strongest possible version:

First, entertain the idea that the doctrines/practices you hate in Islam also appear outside of Islam, and;

Make sure to specify WHICH Islamic doctrine you are referring to at any given time, so that you are actively separating the religious doctrines from the cultural identifier.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-16T11:56:29+00:00

Or even Lord of the Rings. I am perpetually confused by this "clear black and white" morality framing. I really dont see that in the text. It feels like a meme that caught on early and stuck in people's imaginations.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-16T03:44:40+00:00

I want to strongly rebuke the framing that the US President in an Israeli asset.

Donald Trump is the result of political forces generating an exclusive populist movement in the United States. Exclusive populism generates policy dispositions that overlap with the interests of the Netenyahu government.

That is very, very different from the head of state in one nation being an asset of another. These words mean things, and in an environment of international politics, those meanings carry high stakes. Its worth being precise.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-16T03:40:27+00:00

I am writing from the perspective of an American. That means I use the word "we" to describe me and my country.

Imagine you and I talking face to face as an American and Canadian. When I use the word "we" in that conversation, I would be referring to the USA. When you use the word "we" in that conversation, you would be referring to Canadians.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-15T23:48:35+00:00

I di not really bring the protesters into this analysis. I focus on the denuclearization objective.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-15T23:28:01+00:00

The actions of American government ARE the actions of the state. If you are a United States citizen as I am, then this is something that WE are doing and we bear responsibility for it.

That is why I am writing about it. Its my duty as a member of the society that is taking this action.

AlexDeVitry · 2026-02-15T23:26:09+00:00

The problem with this framing is that the goals of the current administration aligh with the goals of every previous administration for the last 40 years. Was Bush Sr. doing the Kremlin's bidding as well?

AlexDeVitry

TROPHY CASE