Help Us Name a Show About IR for Troubled Times

If universities were to disappear completely, what books from international relations and foreign policy would be worth saving? A buddy and I are in the process of launching a new podcast and book club that responds to a wicked set of problems:

• Students don’t really read anymore;

• International relations as a field is kind of dying;

• Policy schools have become factories for Establishment ideology, and no longer serve as meaningful pipelines into policy jobs (what non-fascist job openings even exist?);

• Universities run on an unsustainable business model and are under siege by the Trump administration; and

• There is no policy cadre or “party school” for socialists and progressive political projects, especially when it comes to geopolitics.

We came to the conclusion that all of the above is true, and yet we both have training in international relations and find a lot of value in (some) of what we’ve learned. We think a critically minded podcast and discussion group about IR-related books would respond to all of the above problems.

In short, we see the need for a people’s foreign policy project—we need to open up access to knowledge about IR so that anyone can have an actually-great-books education for a $1.50 in library fees (Good Will Hunting) rather than $200k in Harvard debt. And in a world where reading is rare, the podcast-and-discuss format is a way to make the canon accessible.

There’s more I can say about our manifesto, but for now, the key thing to know is that we plan to do critical readings of the old/current Establishment canon in IR and books that we think should be part of a new canon. IR for advocates of peace, democracy, and equality in a world that’s going the opposite way.

And this is why we need your help:

Make your voice heard! And feel free to add alternatives in the comments if you’ve got something better.

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