RW Think Tank has a Fellow in 'Anglo-American Security Policy'

[ck4829]

The Heritage Foundation has a Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy. The only problem with this is that this guy is the only guy ever known in this field, he has no colleagues or anything. It sounds like this guy might be fake.

A friend of mine sent me a curious link to a story on FOXNews.com about how UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's comments about the Iraq war being illegal were a "serious blunder." At the bottom of the column is a blurb about the authors. One of the authors, one Dr. Nile Gardiner, is listed as "a fellow in Anglo-American security policy" at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington DC think-tank.

Sounds impressive, no? Well, actually...no. Curious as to what "Anglo-American security policy" actually is, I did a Google search on the term and pulled up hundreds of links. Understandably, the first two were links to the Heritage Foundation website. But as I started scanning them, I noticed an interesting pattern: every single one of them also contained some variation on the phrase "Nile Gardiner, Fellow of..." On the fourth page, I finally found a link to a Salon article by Joe Conason (who seemed dubious about this academic field), but it, too, was directly quoting something Dr. Gardiner had said.

After going through six pages of links without finding one not associated with this man, I finally did a new search, this time excluding his name. In a nutshell, if you ignore the spelling error links, you get nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, and bubkus.

In other words, this academic field, in which our friend Nile Gardiner is a fellow, doesn't exist outside of one man: Dr. Gardiner himself. How does one become a Ph.D. of an imaginary academic discipline? Did he just wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I know something about America, and something about Britain, and I have opinions on how we should handle security matters, so I'll just declare myself an expert?" Granted, Dr. Gardiner does have a Ph.D. in British Imperial History, and as his degree is from Yale University, I'm inclined to believe it exists. But Anglo-American Security Policy?
http://citizencoyote.blogspot.com/2004/10/fantasy-academics.html

[WearyOne]

1. typical Fox..one man's view equals 'news'..fair and balanced ??

[sniffa]

2. i'm a feLLow of corn muffin security

[WearyOne]

3. send your resume to Fox then

[pnorman]

4. I tried that Google search also.

Only reviewed a few pages so far. Here's one interesting link I found: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/july-dec04/intelligence_7-14.html Interesting that a Heritage Foundation flack is making a best case for the British Labour Party.

But when I stripped off the name, the number of hits BALLOONED. I've been using Google extensively, but I need to learn a little more on making efficient searches.

pnorman

[tanyev]

5. Is "Mein Kampf" one of the critical documents of this discipline?

[ck4829]

6. self-kick