CPU Events

John Mueller
Devils and Duct Tape: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration

February 15, 2006 at 8:00pm
517 Hamilton Hall

Biography

John Mueller holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science, at Ohio State University where he teaches courses in international relations.

He is currently working on terrorism and particularly on the reactions (or over-reactions) it often inspires. His "A False Sense of Insecurity?" published in Regulation in 2004, gives some indication of his approach to the subject, and the ideas there are developed further in "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration," International Studies Perspectives, May 2005, and in "Six Rather Unusual Propositions about Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence, Autumn 2005 .

Mueller is the author of a book analyzing public opinion during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (Wiley, 1973) (called "a classic" by the American Political Science Review) and of Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (Basic Books, 1989) which deals with changing attitudes toward war. In a front page review of this latter book in the Sunday book section of the Washington Post, McGeorge Bundy commented, "Mueller makes you think, and his method of argument combines fresh insights with trenchant prose in a way that makes thoughtful reading agreeable." Mueller has also published Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War (University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation of World Politics (HarperCollins, 1995). His Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery was published in 1999 by Princeton University Press. In his review in The Weekly Standard, David J. Silver writes, "Mueller's provocative book deserves a wide audience. . . . Mueller writes sharp, brisk, and witty prose that is unfailingly lucid." Mueller's book about international and civil wars, The Remnants of War, was published by Cornell University Press in 2004. Writing the The New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook called this book "brilliantly original and urgent." It was awarded the Lepgold Prize for the best book on international relations in 2004.

Mueller has published scores of articles in such journals as International Security, American Political Science Review, Security Studies, Orbis, American Journal of Political Science, National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Foreign Policy, as well as many editorial page columns and articles in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Reason, Washington Post, and New York Times. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Nobel Institute in Olso, Norway.

Mueller is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received several teaching prizes.