Professor Daniel Drezner's got a not-so tongue-in-cheek post slamming the American Political Science Association for scheduling its annual convention in New Orleans for Labor Day Weekend, at the height of hurricane season, "How not to take political scientists seriously":
Readers might be aware that Tropical Storm Isaac appears to be bypassing the Republican National Convention in Tampa and is instead headed.... right for New Orleans. It's scheduled to his the NOLA area on Wednesday. This is a wee problem for political scientists because, well, the American Political Science Association annual meeting is scheduled to be held in - wait for it -- New Orleans from Thursday to Sunday. APSA has already cancelled all Wednesday pre-meeting activities, and based on the storm path, I'd place a 50/50 bet on the whole convention being scrubbed (the other possibility is APSA Hunger Games, which would end badly for all the post-materialists).Okay. Makes sense, right? Perhaps Drezner's the calm, cool observer of convention scheduling protocols? I'd believe it myself, except when it comes to hurricanes, you'd think Dr. Drezner might withhold judgment, considering his epic blogging blunder from 2005, "We interrupt normal blogging about the rest of the world to freak out about THE BIG STORM!!!!" You have to read the post to believe it. Two days later, on August 29th, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the rest is history. Needless to say, Drezner f-ked up, "Hurricane Porn Open Thread":
This gives rise to a very simple question of mine: why, in the name of all that is holy, did any political scientist think it was a good idea to have the annual meeting in a hurricane zone... DURING HURRICANE SEASON??!!
CROW-EATING UPDATE: The post below was written 24 hours before the waters of Lake Ponchatrain broke through the levee, devastated New Orleans, and video footage came in on damage to the Mississippi Gulf coast. I must concur with James Joyner that the coverage of this hurricane was not overhyped in the end, and at this point is a rather trivial issue compared to the damage at hand...See? There's more of that chutzpah, trying to save your hypothesis whilst one of the country's deadliest hurricanes was destroying New Orleans really takes a lot. Talk about not taking political scientists seriously.
We all screw up blogging here and there. The trick is to not fool yourself into thinking people won't remember.
And in Drezner's case, I'd be more forgiving if the dude had a record of speaking out in defense of Israel over the last few years. It's bad enough that his fellow FP blogger is Stephen "The Israel Lobby" Walt. But in Drezner's case I literally don't remember him really ever sticking his neck out on a question of Middle East politics that might challenge the academy's orthodoxy on the extermination of the Jewish state. And Drezner's Jewish. I generally quit reading him years ago, so I could be wrong and would be glad to correct the record. But early impressions matter. And there's something to be said for integrity when it comes to Israel and the political science profession --- we could use more.
In any case, the APSA's website is here. They've cancelled Wednesday's events and plan to proceed with the convention on Thursday. I'll say a prayer for the political scientists and all the residents of the Gulf Coast. Even the dates of landfall are almost the same.
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