IRdreams

Gawd...can a moderate close this thread already. This is a total waste of server resources. There be trollz here. And they're beating a dead horse.

To my earlier point about public law as a part of political science (further evidence of why JDs should be on political science faculties):

http://polisci.berke...djurisprudence/

Berkeley confirms in its definition that public law is a subfield of political science, concerned with BOTH the study of legal behavior AND the study of constitutional and legal doctrine ( it's previous obvious that the latter is best understood and communicated by someone with a JD).

Furthermore:

A PhD with a specialization in the subfield of International Relations can be recognized as a professor of Political Science, not simply international relations.

By the same logic, a JD with a background in public law, a subfield of political science according to Berkely (at least), can be recognized as a professor of Political Science, not simply law, right?

Some argued that JDs/LLBs on public law faculties within a larger political science department must also have a PhD as well. Perhaps this is the case sometimes. BUT..upon FURTHER REVIEW, is it really always the case that the JD holder also has PhD IN political science? It looks like it's often in another discipline like History or Sociology, which seems to discredit the notion that ONLY a PhD can participate in, or understand, the poli sci field as a professor. Just some more food for thought.

This is just not true. Students should be learning how social scientists think, make arguments, and explain the phenomena they observe. For example, should you teach the facts of the civil rights movement, or instead use it as an opportunity to introduce students to framing, the collective action problem, the relationship between economic and social change, etc? Should you teach the facts of the 1992 LA riots, or use them to introduce theories of ethnic conflict? Should students memorize the political parties behind each president, or understand the theories of political party chance over time?

If most of what you learn in a political science course are substantive facts, either you got very little out of the course, or the professor failed you as a teacher. And THAT is why JDs' role in political science instruction is extremely limited at best.

Why won't this thread die...? Legal training is totally irrelevant to academia. A JD would make more sense in a history course on U.S. law, not so much on the analytical frameworks involved in political science.

As I thought about this idea (or at least my perception of your argument), it really seems contrary to the purpose of a libeal arts or undergraduate education. If students don't learn substantive facts, or engage with challenging ideas during undergrad, when are they supposed to learn?

I'm pretty sure this is what they call a "red herring." Let me again clarify that this is a topic on political science at the undergraduate level, and it would be helpful to focus on that.

SOG25, if your entire purpose is to say "But a law degree is SO MUCH BETTER!!eleventyone!!," why are you slumming on a poli sci message board?

What are you trying to accomplish here?

There are various points to consider. A J.D. is a trade degree. It prepares one for the practice of law. People who receive a J.D. typically receive no training in teaching. People who receive a Ph.D. typically have to take one or more courses on how to teach, and also typically are assigned to teach discussion sections to help prepare them to become professors. Thus, the J.D. will, on average, be much less prepared to step into the classroom than will be the Ph.D.

Beyond that, there is the matter of substantive preparation. You seem to think that the entirety of political science is about U.S. law and policy. The J.D. would have no substantive qualification to teach the vast majority of courses on political theory, comparative politics, international relations, or political behavior, and only would be qualified to teach a portion of courses on U.S. institutions and policy. Even within the realm of law and politics, keep in mind that a lot of law students are busy taking courses on contracts, antitrust, etc.--matters that are relevant for politics, but that hardly are central to what political science departments teach.

Another point is that people with J.D.s do get hired to teach some political science courses. There are some tenured and tenure-track political science faculty who hold J.D.s as their highest degrees, and there are many, many people with J.D.s who are hired as adjuncts to teach courses on law and politics, Constitutional law, etc. Of the offerings in any given political science department, I'd guess that a J.D. might possess the substantive qualifications to teach 5-10%.

Let's turn this around--if the Ph.D. and J.D. are as interchangeable as you have suggested, should we permit people with Ph.D.s in political science to practice law? I would think not. Yes, there is a tiny bit of overlap between training in law and training in political science, but we're talking about two mostly different disciplines.

I guess I would offer advice if the question made sense on a fundamental level. Namely, how is it even possible that one could know how to play the game well enough to get those kinds and combinations of offers and yet not understand how to go about choosing between them? As for those who chastised you for bragging, I think they were misguided: is it really bragging to flaunt that kind of basic inability to make a decision? I call troll.

You are definitely bragging a bit, but you have every right to brag-- it is an amazing accomplishment! Congratulations!!! However keep in mind that the decision process at these institutions is not perfect (it's a game of incomplete info), so it does not necessarily mean that you are the best at political science, just the best at SIGNALLING that you have the potential to be good at political science. (These institutions get in wrong all the time--Harvard has a 50% retention rate--said Harvard prof). I definitely did not get into as good of schools as you (Granted I did not apply to most of the schools you did--only Harvard), but the beauty of the academy is that at it's essense it's about creativity and ideas and anyone with the proper training can compete. I think you have thrown the gauntlet down and I hope you are in my area...formal modelling in IR/Comparative because I look forward to competing with you !!!!!

I can't say that I don't share some of that envy of the OP, but I also don't think anything he's said has been boastful or immodest. To the OP, though, are you already excluding Stanford and Columbia? Why so?

One would hope that the first thing you learn at the top programs is humility and tact.

I don't think its unreasonable to ask other people deciding between the same programs for their impressions. Its a pretty consequential decision and I don't think anything I've said is rude or offensive so please mind your own business. I wasn't aware that people are only allowed to bemoan rejections.

My advice is stop showing off and just pick one reasonably. What could be the worst for god's sake? Harvard? Yale? Or Princeton? No offense, but I think what you do is just annoying.

Point well-noted and agreed upon (I guess I'm just not used to being abusively maligned).

In response to waitingtoexhale: You've just hit the nail on the head. When I asked "So it would be interesting to know where such a thing is actually ignored, or as the prior poster says, differing ideas of what education is", and that "We know for certain that plagiarism (or whatever kind of euphemism you may want to use) is explicitly and strongly communicated as a no-no in the U.S. and most other countries I know of even in the first year of undergraduate studies", I guess I was unhappy in the OP's characterization of a personal failure to be the result of his/her country's cultural norm in an academic setting, or in the OP's words "a common practice".

Being an international student myself (and from one of the places thepoorstockinger mentioned in his post), I find it hard to believe that what the OP has committed can be attributed to common practice or because there is "little such honor policy" in any country's academic setting.

However, I am fully open to hear what these "different idea of what education is in some education systems" is, because as thepoorstockinger puts it, this is possible. But to say I am "finger pointing towards education systems of different nations", "discuss the perceived honesty of every country" or that I am doing singular characterization of different nation's education system, are accusations I am unable to accept.

That, I hope, puts a clear perspective on my original question that was taken to be something else.

I repeat:





I repeat:



I don't see how putting forward a point by giving supportive literature is bogus.



I repeat:



Don't worry, you paraphrased the gist of the book for me, I'm not going to read the book based on the "recommendation by a discussion board nutjob".



You asked "How would knowing which country OP is from change anything?"
I replied "It doesn't....it would be interesting to know where such a thing is actually ignored, or as the prior poster says, differing ideas of what education is."
You criticized "this degeneration of the discussion to finger pointing towards education systems of different nations is unnecessary at best, bigoted at worst."
I countered "the above characterization is putting words into my mouth."
You withdrew your comment "Have to admit that is most definitely true . It's a prerequisite for a pointless flame war."
I appreciated your honesty "Thank you, I do enjoy a war-of-words sometimes....but ((singing Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire"))"
You said you didn't understand. "I did find the whole "Don't think of an elephant!" angle irrelevant and still do."
I said I understood your difficulty "Unfortunately, you would need to have read the book and have some basic understanding of how language is used cognitively to understand my comments"

I didn't write the algorithm and not understanding someone does not make his comments irrelevant.

Of course you do, I didn't say you didn't. If you trace my comments, I was responding to Jakrabite.



Again, I didn't ask anyone to go read up a whole book FOR them to "fathom what I write in my posts". I did paraphrase my point being "how frames reinforce ideas and what facts and language will come through a person's respective filters or frames."



I was making a point by citing scholarly work, the way we have to cite sources and give credit to findings in academic articles, I did not use it exclusively to communicate. And yes, linguistics is a science, I agree.



It's not a fallacy, it's taking mathematical logic, instead of argumentative logic, to incorrectly position linguistic phrases. "Yea, right!" in this context is unproblematic, but would need to be employed with a clear and specific prosodic contour. It is this prosodic feature layered upon the semantic of the words that somehow reverse the polarity of a positive semantical meaning into a negative pragmatic meaning. It's called cynicism.



No I don't see it. You would have to qualify what you mean by "in the same breath". I was saying that Jakrabite's statement committed a logical fallacy, and the same statement also works to reveal his frame of mind at the same time. I don't see how that is a logical fallacy or a contradiction.

Red Herring: perspective of what the "differing ideas of what education" are =/= nuggets like "I'm from XYZ and my education system encourages plagiarism"



1. Non Sequitur: The lack of pragmatic need to "list every country I know" has no connection to rationalizing "discuss the perceived honesty of every country."
2. E.g. 2 of "Don't think of an elephant!": I never did and still do not want to "discuss the perceived honesty of every country", my perspective was from the beginning cultural and ideological difference.



Another Red Herring: what's that you said about finger-pointing? =/= Maybe another topic can be started on, "differing ideas of what finger pointing" is.



Thank you, I do enjoy a war-of-words sometimes....but ((singing Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire"))



Outright Ad Hominem attack