ICC — The Intercultural Center convulsed in violence yesterday as realist international relations scholars in the Department of Government invaded the office space of their liberal internationalist colleagues.

Striking swiftly and without warning, the realist professors launched a coordinated assault against the liberals, occupying their offices and annexing them for their own use.

“It was your average day around the office when the realists suddenly just descended upon us,” said George Shambaugh, still nursing a head wound from where he had been bludgeoned with a copy of Hobbes’ Leviathan. “Now they won’t even let us back inside the department.”

Shambaugh sought asylum in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese which, responding to the humanitarian crisis, has opened its doors to the desperate liberals. Unfortunately, conditions in the refugee camps are poor.

“The way we’ve been reduced to living—it’s almost like we’re TAs,” Shambaugh complains. “I mean, what kind of person is so cruel and selfish that he would do this to his own colleagues?”

“Hey, I object to that characterization,” said realist professor Matthew Kroenig when asked for comment. “Cruel or no, this had nothing to do with who we are as people; it was the system that drove our actions. The liberals had just ordered a shipment of letter openers. Were those meant for the peaceful opening of correspondence, or were they planning to use them against us? I just don’t know. Classic security dilemma. We were merely rational, unitary actors acting so as to maximize our own security. It’s all right there in Kenneth Waltz.”

Looking back, the liberals say they should have seen the threat coming.

“The realists swallowed up the department’s constructivists a few weeks ago,” Shambaugh said. “At the time we let it slide and appeased them. That was a mistake. We should have allied with the constructivists to balance the threat.”

Still, most of the liberals simply did not believe the realists were capable of launching such an attack. Most ascribe to the “tenured peace theory” which maintains that tenured professors, though on average not less violent than non-tenured professors, will nevertheless not fight with one another. With nothing to gain from each other and recognizing the legitimacy that tenure confers, there will be no cause for conflict between the parties, so the theory holds.

Additionally, the liberals had thought that the realists were sufficiently integrated into intra-department institutions that the benefits of cooperation would outweigh those of conflict.

“We all came together frequently in department meetings to address collective action problems,” said Shambaugh. “That was how we were able to implement the landmark ‘You-Kill-It, You-Fill-It’ Accords of 1984. It completely resolved the problem of department-wide coffee shortages. On top of that, we engaged in a high level of trade. The realists had the copy paper and we had the toner. Everyone relied on everyone else.”

Kroenig disagrees, “Collective action? Trade? Don’t make me laugh! First of all, they had the copier—that’s an indivisible good. And secondly, at the end of the day we are all living in an anarchic department system in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The liberals were a rising power set to threaten our hegemony with their letter openers. We had to make a preventive strike. Plus, if you think for a minute that we would forgo an opportunity to seize their toner, Post-it notes, and other fungible resources, you must be crazy.”

The university community has condemned the realists’ actions and will meet to discuss potential solutions. The Department of Economics has recommended a sanctions regime to bring the realists to heel. At press time, this proposal was being met with serious opposition from faculty in the McDonough School of Business who have close commercial ties to the realists.