BAH Opens The Persia House, Provides Detailed Analysis On Events In Iran And Persian Gulf (Persia-house.com)

Booz Allen Hamiliton has just announced the opening of its online analytic resource, the Persia House.

The Persia House focuses on events in Iran, specifically, and the Persian Gulf in general. It covers a wide variety of topics including economics, security, domestic and international politics and nuclear proliferation among others. It even covers culture and humor in order to provide the widest possible context for its analytic offerings.

Much of the content of the site seems to center around Persia House's proprietary translations of recent articles. What differentiates these offerings from other translation services is the Persia House's often lengthy analysis of the articles and the context in which they were written. I particularly appreciated the analyst notes regarding the religious and political leanings of the various sources that the Persia House analysts use. Beyond the current news, the Persia House also provides more extensive analysis on a variety of topics. I do wish that it had a few more relevant graphics (maps, videos, etc.) but I suspect that those features will come with time.

In short, I am no Iranian expert but it looks like pretty good stuff.

BAH intends to make the service a subscription service at the end of the month but for now it is free to anyone interested. I know that they are also very interested in feedback so do not hesitate to leave a comment here or on their website.

International Relations A Growth Discipline In Brazil (Liveblogging ISA)

I attended an interesting panel this morning on the using simulations in the classroom (more on that in the next post) but heard something about the growth of International Relations (IR) programs in Brazil that I thought was very interesting.

Apparently IR is a booming industry in Brazil. In Rio alone the number of colleges and universities offering programs has grown from 1 in the 90's to 7 today. My first instinct was that this was due to Brazil's growing sense of importance on the world stage and that the increased interest in IR by its young people was a manifestation of this self-awareness.

Wrong.

According to the two Brazilian professors (from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio De Janeiro) who spoke, Marcelo Valenca and Manoela Souza, the main reason for the increased interest was 9/11! Marcelo spoke of standing in front of a tiny TV with, as he described it, several thousand young students watching the attack on the twin towers and then, two years later, an explosion of programs in International Relations. Both professors also explained that there was a semantics issue as well and that "International Relations" sounds better in Portuguese than some of the alternatives. Finally, and most interesting to me, was the point (made by Manoela, I think) that even though the students were drawn to IR by 9/11, they stayed because of the world of ideas that the curriculum opened up to them.