The things they say

A few weeks ago on the Crooked Timber weblog an academic called Henry Farrell wrote:

I don’t know of any serious IR [International Relations] scholars who are prepared to defend Bush’s foreign policy. (I’m not counting policy wonks in AEI [the American Enterprise Institute] etc, who face what we may politely describe as a different incentive structure.) There have to be some out there – but as best as I can tell, they’re keeping very quiet.

I commented at the time, as politely as I am capable of, that Professor Farrell had plainly not looked very far in that case. I pointed to John Lewis Gaddis, Professor of History and Political Science at Yale, and author of such seminal studies of post-war American foreign policy as Strategies of Containment, who had commented favourably on the strategic vision behind the administration's thinking. Had Professor Farrell confined himself to a judgement about the administration's execution of that vision (a point on which Professor Gaddis is highly critical) he would have had a point; but that is not what he said.

If the forum in which Professor Gaddis made his remarks was too esoteric for Professor Farrell, he could have found it referenced in this blog last February. Perhaps he has now stumbled across it, for there is a prudent moderation in his tone this week. He writes, under the tendentious title "IR Scholars Unite":

Two months ago, I noted the paucity of international relations scholars who were prepared to defend the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq.

So "I don't know of any" is deftly transmuted to "the paucity of", which is a rather different matter. Having demonstrated what was at the very least - and this is being charitable - a lack of intellectual curiosity and a disinclination to read, Professor Farrell has come up with a linguistic expedient (let us call it assonantly the "Farrell Straddle", and mentally store it for future reference) to make out that his initial characterisation was right all along.

When pronouncing "Crooked Timber", recall that it is the first word that is stressed.