high-falutin conferences

As your humble blogger has aged matured, he finds himself invited to more shindigs that are logistically impossible for him to attend [He also has started referring to himself in the third person -- what's up with that?--ed.  Oh, stuff it.] 

This occasionally gnaws atmy psyche, because missing high-falutin' conferences preys on the same insecurity I have possessed since my grad school days -- that somewhere, at this very moment, there is an awesome, interesting conference going on, and I wasn't invited. 

Fortunately, Slate's Jack Shafer makes me feel better about not attending The Atlantic's "First Draft of History" conference.  Whenever I get one of these invites in the future, I'm going to have to re-read this paragraph: 

I've got just three questions about "conferences" like these: Why, why, why? Other than hustling a little cash for the good cause that is the Atlantic magazine, what purpose do they serve? No, certifying members of the power elite does not qualify as a good cause. Will Gen. Petraeus make history by disclosing that he regrets the surge plan? Will David Axelrod volunteer that the Obama administration is a mess? Will Vikram Pandit fall to his knees and confess that the crash of 2008 was all his fault and beg to be shot? Not a chance. The participants will regift the presents they've given away dozens of times before, and the by-invitation-only audience will tear into the packages as if it's their ultimate Christmas.

Your humble blogger will be away from his traditional blog desk and bound for Toronto for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. 

I will likely post some about interesting tidbits from the conference.  Readers are encouraged to peruse the program and let me know which panels they think are "must-see" events. 

I can only speculate how many political scientists -- people with plenty of post-graduate education, mind you -- are thwarted in their attempt to attend APSA because they forgot that Canada is actually not the United States and that they therefore need a passport to get into Canada (and, more importantly, return to the United States). 

Your humble blogger will be posting lightly over the next few days, as he is taking the Official Blog Wife and Official Blog Children to a sunny and warm (but undisclosed) locale. 

Before I go, however, some brief reflections on the International Studies Association meetings, which, like Stephen Walt, I did attend:

1. I think ISA needs to set aside maybe five prime-time panel slots and not book them until a month before the conference.  Between the deadline for submissions and the conference, a s**tload of Very Big Events have taken place, and yet there were too few panels devoted to the financial crisis, Russia-Georgia, etc.  Shortening the lag time might help a bit on this front.
2. I was a discussant for a terrific panel on whether the spread of mobile phones is increasing the ability of civil society to protest against authoritarian governments.  The provisional answer is, "not really," but the spread of these technologies might lead to improved human rights performances by those same governments. 
3. How the economic crisis affects my field -- a lot more people were asking me, with a twinge of desperation in their voices, whether Fletcher was hiring. 
4. Joseph Nye was touched to find out that his peers believed him to be the most influential American IR theorist in terms of affecting policy.  He nevertheless displayed some genuine humility in suggesting that this assessment was bunk. 
5. There was something bizarre about having the main conference hotel be in Times Square.  If ISA is going to go there, why not hold the conference in my dream locale? 

Being a moderator on a conference panel is a thankless task. By implication, you're the least important person on the dais (otherwise you'd be on the panel rather than moerating it). If you're good and you're lucky, no one notices you. For every other scenario, however, you get noticed for bad reasons.

Reading this New York Times account by Katrin Bennhold, I feel some small measure of sympathy for Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey walked off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, during a panel discussion on Gaza at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, and vowed never to return to the annual gathering.

Mr. Erdogan apparently became incensed after he was prevented by the moderator from responding to remarks by Mr. Peres on the recent Israeli attack. The panel was running late and Mr. Peres was to have had the last word, participants said....

In a news conference immediately following the panel discussion, Mr. Erdogan said that he was particularly upset with Mr. Ignatius, who he said had failed to direct a balanced and impartial panel.

By all accounts, the discussion of the Gaza incursion was a lively one, with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, joining Mr. Peres and Mr. Erdogan. For the most part, participants said, Mr. Peres was alone in defending the Israeli role in Gaza, which is why he was given the final 25 minutes to speak. Earlier, Mr. Erdogan had spoken for 12 minutes about the sufferings of the Palestinians.

In an ideal world, as a moderator you always want each panelist to have two minutes apiece for closing remarks. In that same ideal world, politicians are capable of limiting their remarks to 120 seconds. In the real world, Ignatius was between a rock and a hard place.

Davos -- a.k.a., the World Economic Forum -- is upon us, and there are conflicting reports about the overall attendance at the conference.  There is a general consensus, however, that politicians will be overshadowing businessmen at this year's conclave. 

This is all to the good.  World trade is shrinking for the first time since the early eighties.  Perhaps getting the best political telent on the planet together in Switzerland will shake the policy gridlock loose. 

Consider, for example, New York governor David Paterson.  Fresh from his meticuluous, classy, and error-free selection of Hillary Clinton's replacement for the Senate, Paterson is headed for Davos.  Here are his deep thoughts on why he is going: 

[The] question involved Mr. Paterson’s trip to Davos, Switzerland, which his office announced on Saturday. Much of the five-day forum will focus on how countries and central banks can address the global downturn, and Mr. Paterson said the United States stood to gain by lending money to other countries.

“There’s an immense opportunity if we use some of those resources to try and make loans available to other countries,” he said. “It would give us bigger resources for the taxpayers.”

“There’s a desire to have leaders from around the country be in Davos to talk about the interests of a lot of countries right now whose exports are limited,” he said, before leaving the hotel.

A contest for readers:  convert Paterson's answer into coherent prose.  Bonus points if you can convert it into prose that justifies Paterson's trip.

UPDATE:  Apparently Paterson couldn't convert this answer into plain English either -- he's changed his mind about going to Davos.