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Anna Meier

Nov 2, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read

English-language outlets are reporting that the city of Dresden has declared a "Nazi emergency". I'd like to break down what that actually means (thread). 1/ bbc.com/news/world-eur…

First, as shown in the actual text, the motion is not for an explicit declaration of a "Nazinotstand" (public emergency; think about this like declaring climate change a national/global emergency), but rather to debate whether that term is appropriate. 2/

https://twitter.com/ChrisCldtz/status/1189643799171080199?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1189643799171080199&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutschland%2F2019-11%2Frechtsextremismus-nazinotstand-dresden-stadtrat-gewalt

This is important. As Max Aschenbach, the councilor who proposed the motion, explained, "I also wanted to know what kind of people I'm sitting with in the city council of Dresden." This was symbolic, & yet clear lines were drawn. 3/

The vote was 39–29, w/ votes against mainly coming from the far-right AfD and the center-right CDU. The CDU objected that calling the surge of right-wing violence & sympathy in Dresden an "emergency" was a rhetorical blunder ("sprachliche Missgriff"). 4/ tagesspiegel.de/politik/diese-…

While Aschenbach & others view the term "emergency" as signaling a threat to a democratic society, while the CDU interprets "emergency" to mean a threat to the public order (all quotes in article in the 1st tweet). This reflects fundamentally diff. security orientations. 5/

The CDU, as always, interprets security in terms of order. The left, meanwhile, interprets security as threats to the integrity of Dresdener (& German) identity. This is a serious point of disagreement that hinders progress against right-wing extremism in Germany. 6/

& the CDU's alignment with the AfD on this vote indicates persistent polarization in many parts of the former East. When factions of the CDU talked about not voting w/ the AfD after the Lübcke murder in June, this was viewed as hugely significant. This is why. 7/

tl;dr: Not everyone understands "emergency" or "security" in the same way. & even if they do, it's easy to weaponize these words via different interpretations. Crucial to recognize this in order to make sense of the security landscape in Germany & other contexts. /fin

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Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Jan 2

@RossMittiga

My visceral reaction to the tweetstorm attacking @RossMittiga and his article was anger—not at the many commentators who clearly hadn’t read the article (though c’mon, folks) but rather at the microcosm of so much that is exclusionary about US political science. 1/

1. Conceptual territorialism, and the unwillingness to accept flexibility and creativity with ideas we have come to see as sacrosanct instead of contingent (democracy is an idea, not a cult);

2. A conceptualization of rigor as “how many robustness checks have I run” as opposed to “how deeply have I thought about the multitude of assumptions I am making and how much work have I done to situate them in wider conversations”;

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Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Dec 4, 2021

Words that mean different things in US and UK academia: a thread for confused academics on both sides of the pond, or, Anna writes the dictionary she wishes she'd had. 1/

“Faculty”

US: Professors
UK: Like a college at an R1 in the US sense; the “Faculty of Social Sciences” would be all social science departments 2/

“Staff”

US: Department administrators, librarians, research support staff, etc.
UK: All of those people plus professors/lecturers 3/

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Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Apr 28, 2021

Welcome to a late-night thread about data, terrorism data, and what we think we’re measuring when we’re measuring terrorism. 1/

This thread was sparked by Benjamin Allison’s new article on coding inconsistencies in the CSIS and New America datasets on terrorist attacks in the U.S. As a frequent critic of the CSIS data in particular, I’m sympathetic to the goal here. BUT… universiteitleiden.nl/binaries/conte… 2/

…there are additional questions I want to raise. The first: are the CSIS/New America datasets unique in their somewhat sloppy coding of what is and isn’t terrorism and their judgments about motives in contexts of uncertainty? Not at all. 3/

Read 18 tweets

Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Mar 14, 2021

So the Biden admin released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, which de-prioritizes international counterterrorism in favor of great power balancing and statecraft.

Here is a Saturday night thread on why those are actually not separate things. 1/

What this thread is NOT: an argument for expanding the counterterrorism umbrella to include yet more policy areas. It is, however, a plea to observe how the 20+ yrs of "war on terror" discourse have exacerbated problems & expanded the idea of terror whether we like it or not. 2/

Let’s take an example: China. From a statecraft perspective, China is a major strategic concern for the US. If you believe human rights need to at least in part govern U.S.–China relations, however, then counterterrorism has to become part of the equation. 3/

Read 9 tweets

Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Mar 12, 2021

Six years ago, I visited the PhD department that I’ll graduate from this summer. In light of that, here is a thread on Visiting R1 Departments When You Did Not Attend an R1 for Undergrad. 1/

First and foremost: you will meet a lot of fellow prospective students from R1s. That world is so different, & the training they received, the skills they already have, & the knowledge they’ve picked up about academia might feel intimidating to you. It definitely did to me! 2/

(It also might not: undergrad experiences vary so widely, even within specific “tiers” of institutions, and nothing is wrong with you if you are not intimidated. I am simply sharing my experience in case it helps to normalize feeling a bit out of your depth.) 3/

Read 15 tweets

Anna Meier

@AnnaMeierPS

Jan 11, 2021

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1348726592848199681

The "black militant" mentioned here as taking refuge in Cuba is Assata Shakur. In 2013, she became the first woman on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. It is not a coincidence that she is also Black, nor that this happened almost 40 years after her alleged crime. 1/

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1348726592848199681

Shakur was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a Black Panther splinter group. She was found guilty of killing a state trooper in 1977, though the facts of the case are disputed. This NPR interview is a decent overview. 2/ npr.org/2013/05/07/181…

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the FBI & other national security bureaucracies did a lot of work to write the BLA, Black Panthers, & other groups into the emerging narrative that identified violence by people of color, particularly Black people, as terrorism. 3/

Read 6 tweets

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