@Thor Halvorssen As my position on this has been misrepresented on Twitter, Ill point out first, writing in my personal capacity, not on behalf of any employer past, present or future, and definitely not in the pay of any gas or oil company or any state or entity with interests in this region. 1. Im all for disclosure of conflict of interests; this professor, who I had never heard about before, did not disclose her affiliations with SOCAR, and that was wrong, most definitely. NYT chose to rectify it; disturbingly, Washington post did not. And their failure to do this lets us know the craven climate many operate in, in academia and in government. I view the entire field of Russian and Eurasian area studies as corrupt and suspect because of its relationships like this one with SOCAR, and its need to keep visas and access to regimes. Thats exactly why citizens debate on social media is so needed. Entire think tanks are bought up by Kazakhstan in Washington. Entire swathes of Russian scholarship is paralyzed by fear of visa loss and loss of relevance. This is an alarming situation. 2. The SOCAR/Azerbaijan government perspective is one that is entirely problematic regarding human rights, as Baku has numerous political prisoners including our colleagues Leyla and Arif Yunus. Anything they say has to be understood in the context of their authoritarian regime. 3. However, iIts not established that Shaffer spouted the SOCAR line here, on SOCARs dime, because in fact, she raised concern about Moscows meddling in this region and Moscows land grabs and thwarting of pipelines -- which indeed Moscow did, regarding Crimea, and regarding Turkmenistan and the EU and the Trans Caspian Thats not the SOCAR line, as in fact SOCAR is now in a joint venture with Sechin and Rosneft! So Shaffers op-ed piece may not have occurred with their tacit approval -- we dont know. 4. Its good to expose the affiliations -- undisclosed -- and agendas of people who affect decision makers. I dont exempt NGOs in this. Casey Michel, the PhD student who exposed this, is someone who has consistently published articles that question criticism of Kazakhstan and Russia. a. Example, my analysis of his curious reluctance to concede OSCEs quite proper call on the lack of free and fair elections in Kazakhstan: 3dblogger.typepad/different_stans/2012/01/registan-winds-up-on-regimes-side-with-crafty-kazakhstan-election-analysis.html b. Example, as can be seen by comparing and contrasting these two pieces, one by Motyl and one by Michel: worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/deconstructing-putin-ukraine caseymichel.tumblr/post/70239283869/the-personhood-of-ukraine Do you think Ukraine is to Russia as Normandy is to France? I sure dont! 5. Questioning Michels pro-Russian position in this essay and others, and his curious reluctance to criticize regimes -- and instead, only criticize fellow academics or NGOS -- is not questioning the disclosure of Shaffer, nor is it any effort to somehow justify her proximity to the Azerbaijani government. Its an effort to ask that her content be debated on its merits, and be debated *with criticism of Russia -- instead of once again, having a disruptive caper like this derail debate *about Russia and its meddling*. 6. No one was prepared for the Crimean land grab. And its partly because of an appalling sterility of debate about Russia, and even a chill over criticism of Russian in academia and government for reasons of political correctness and worse. 7. As someone who has championed freedom fighters in Oslo from this region, when governments and even NGOs in the West were too timid or ignored them in favour of others they found more amenable to their anti-Americanism, I hope you can see that the issue here isnt just getting disclosure and getting Big Oil out of debates and academia, its about being able to criticize Russia.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 06:23:12 +0000
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