I'm neither an education expert nor an IR scholar but @profpaulpoast and @colaresi's threads on "canon" are a useful, if oblique, insight into how the way we teach a subject is its own type of intellectual property. 1/

What goes on the syllabus & in what order puts forth a thesis and a framework for synthesizing literature and whole fields of knowledge; it's not a magically correct organization of texts to learn a True Thing™ with marginal errors arising only from term timing constraints. 2/

The texts we choose & how we implicitly put them in conversation w each other imbues a perspective (ours) & legitimates perspectives (whose texts are primary/central, whose are worthy responses/ critiques, whose perspectives are real or only imaginary bc they were left out). 3/

Anyone on the tenure-track knows that teaching is undervalued for professional advancement but has an outsized impact. Some folx enjoy having the power to "shape young minds" or serve as an intellectual mentor. 4/

And/but how we teach (not just, do we lecture well or grade kindly) also has an outsized impact on (1) what laypersons walk away thinking is important/ meaningful; what issues/perspectives they've had an opportunity to take seriously, evaluate & deeply consider. 5/

And (2) what students who might want to pursue academic careers can conceive of as possible questions to ask and avenues to pursue--not for lack of imagination, but for understanding what is considered worthy and interesting. 6/

I teach "substantive" courses extremely rarely and in some ways am not in the conversation about what gets taught or "should" be taught as "canon" in comparative politics, political economy, etc. But imo the bar for this is *even higher* when teaching methods. 7/

So many (most?) books and papers on the technical details of statistical methodology feature white, cis, male voices and authors. Drawing those into conversation with really important work using sophisticated qualitative methods can implicitly reify the notion that 8/

math is for men; interviews and ethnography are "soft" skills; a methodological hierarchy still exists; and no overlap in conception across qual/quant skills is possible. 9/

BUT ALSO the examples chosen on problem sets, the "applied" articles using different methods, and resources for further reading are also opportunities/risks: 10/

They signify what questions "matter," what's possible to study, and what meaningful answers or insights in social science can even look like. 11/

As a personal aside, I find this standard extremely stressful and challenging to meet (and often suspect I don't get anywhere close). Even more so when being told to simply "mail it in" or minimize time spent on teaching relative to "important" work. 12/

It's not just intellectual laziness or a failure to de-center privileged perspectives that reproduces problematic and narrow paradigms--it's systematic incentives. 13/13 #AcademicTwitter