Welcome to My Blog

I am developing this blog because I'm a political scientist who is interested in helping my students -- and others, I hope -- to make the leap from following politics in the newspaper or online to actually thinking like a political scientist.  I teach mostly in the national security field at Regent University -- and usually teach a course on terrorism, one on intelligence and sometimes a course on disaster assistance management.  But my other real love is the field of political methodology and I frequently teach the graduate seminar on research methods.  Many of my students come to Regent already quite immersed in the day to day chatter of politics (okay, usually it's conservative politics).  However, they often look surprised on the first day of our research methods seminar when I ask them the question:  Is political science really a science?  What makes it scientific?  These are the questions I hope to help my readers to explore in this blog.  I'll be posting a couple of times a week and will be presenting articles about current events and contemporary political problems -- but then I'll attempt to lead students to think through these events as a political scientist, drawing larger lessons and considering the ramifications of particular events within a larger framework.