The Need for Praxis: Bringing Policy Relevance Back In

Abstract

The September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States are the subject of two commentaries. Bruce Jentleson of Duke University asks where political scientists and international relations scholars should turn to find answers to a variety of questions emerging from the attacks. He faults academia for overemphasizing theory at the expense of policy relevance, saying that if scholars hope to move beyond “conversations and knowledge building that while highly intellectual are excessively insular and disconnected from the empirical realities that are the discipline’s raison d’être,” they must “seek greater praxis between theory and practice.”