Note: After doing so this past Spring for an Intro to IR course, I again assigned an optional reflective essay, this time to my POLS 5660 US foreign policy course here at the University of Utah this Fall. It asked students to reflect on the events of 2020 (the pandemic, the protests, the US Presidential election, and whatever else they found noteworthy fr... Read this >>
Profile: Brent Steele - Professor of Political Science and International Relations
Brent J. Steele is the Francis D. Wormuth Presidential Chair, Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at the University of Utah. He researches and teaches courses on US foreign policy, international security, international relations theory, and international ethics. He is the author of four books, including the recently published Restraint in International Politics (Cambridge University Press), and has a forthcoming co-authored fifth book, Vicarious Identity in International Relations (Oxford University Press) in production. He is the co-editor of four books and four journal special issues, co-editor of the recently published Routledge Handbook on Ethics in International Relations, and published thirty-five articles in a number of international studies and political science journals, most recently in the Journal of Global Security Studies and International Theory.
Brent Steele's COVID-19 Diary
29 Nov 2020 : Reflective essay for my US foreign policy class
Brent Steele, Professor of Political Science and International Relations
31 Oct 2020 : The case for the ‘moral equivalency’ of a war on Covid (but just in the US)
I know all the problems with securitizing health threats. It’s awful. It definitely leads to stigma. It’s a bad way to confront them. Stefan Elbe, Jeremy Youde, Owain Williams, Sophie Harman and so many IR health all-stars have talked about the downsides of it. The most recent and comprehensive and persuasive case against securitization of the... Read this >>
Brent Steele, Professor of Political Science and International Relations
09 Jul 2020 : Mid-summer in the DIY country: US Sports Talk as Pandemic Expertise
The Do It Yourself, American Exceptionalism approach to the pandemic rolls on in the United States. While most of the rest of the world has suppressed Covid, the US is a country experiencing déjà vu. It is a land where daily records are now being set for new cases. But it is mainly the land of again. Where the ICU’s and hospitals are o... Read this >>
Brent Steele, Professor of Political Science and International Relations
15 May 2020 : The frustrations of comparative US cases during Covid: Michigan, Iowa, Utah
The frustrations of comparative US cases during Covid: Michigan, Iowa, Utah The United States has become a bit of a laughingstock internationally. Perhaps it always has been, but its collective response to the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have turned that laughter into a mixture of horror, scorn, and pity. The US has as of this writing the most de... Read this >>
Brent Steele, Professor of Political Science and International Relations
23 Apr 2020 : Reflective Essay for my Intro to IR class
Note: I assigned an optional reflective essay to my POLS 2100 Intro to International Relations course here at the University of Utah this Spring once the pandemic turned our class to an online format. It asked students to consider International Relations in light of the pandemic. Before the students had to start their essays, I thought it was useful to do... Read this >>