Brenda Shaffer

American and Israeli scientist, a member of the American Association of Political Sciences. Currently, she teaches at the Haifa University and is a lecturer at the Azerbaijani Diplomatic Academy.

Brenda Shaffer: “In the first decade, there was strong faith in the role of international institutions and international law which can help Azerbaijan to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and regain control over the occupied territories. At the same time, Azerbaijan carried out an intensive diplomatic work.” Source: irevanaz.com

Brenda Shaffer: “Despite the recognition by the United States of the fact that Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent seven regions, the US Congress adopted restrictions on the provision of financial assistance to Azerbaijan in 1992, which has not been withdrawn until now. At the same time, the Congress annually allocates funds to support the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Source: 1news.az

PHOTOS

 

 

SOURCES AND PRESS    

Newrepublic.com: Brenda Shaffer polishes image of Azerbaijan autocracy not disclosing her ties with government

“The woman across the table demanded to know my cholesterol count. This was in front of 30 others, during an on-the-record discussion at Columbia University, where the woman—an academic named Brenda Shaffer, a political science professor at the University of Haifa—replied to my question about her non-disclosures with questions of her own,” Casey Michel writes on the site Newrepublic.com.

As the author notes question on his cholesterol, his wife and tuition fees was not discussed in anywhere else, but at the presentation of Azerbaijan’s plans on redirection of Caspian gas through the Southern Gas Corridor to the European market. The panel featured Shaffer and Vitaliy Baylarbayov, the deputy vice president from SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-run hydrocarbon company. Halfway through the discussion, when the moderator, Jesse McCormick of the Center on Global Energy Policy, referred to Shaffer as a “panelist,” she stopped him. “Moderator,” she corrected. The discussion continued, through some confused looks.

“Once the floor opened, I raised my hand, interested in the role Tony Blair was playing in lobbying for Azerbaijan’s pipeline interests. I was also interested in Shaffer’s role —why she hides her relationship with the Azerbaijani government. A few weeks earlier, Shaffer penned an op-ed in The New York Times claiming that Azerbaijan was the West’s important security partner and that, bizarrely, Russia’s “next land grab” would take place in the South Caucasus—rather than, say, Moldova or northern Kazakhstan. While most analysts scratched their heads at Shaffer’s reasoning, others focused on why she wrote the article in the first place. As first reported by RFE/RL, her impetus may have come from her role as an adviser “for strategic affairs” for the president of SOCAR,” the author writes.

The author writes that when the relationship with the Azerbaijani authorities and Shaffer came to light, the Times was forced to issue an editor’s note saying Shaffer had breached a contractual obligation to “disclose conflicts of interest, actual or potential.” Shortly thereafter, TheWashington Post followed suit, issuing a clarification on an op-ed in which Shaffer had stumped for Azerbaijan’s pipeline push. It’s not clear whether members of Congress knew of Shaffer’s relationship when she testified at a commission hearing over the summer, a discussion in which, in her stated capacity as a scholar, she spoke glowingly of Baku’s role as an American partner.

“When I learned that Shaffer will talk about the hydrocarbon potential of Azerbaijan, and when I saw that she would pose simply as an academic, without revealing her position as an official adviser to the state energy monster,—I saw an opportunity to ask why she was so loath to disclose that relationship,” Michel writes adding that the discussion was recorded and it was open. In response, Shaffer began to ask personal questions and interrupted the moderator, trying to call to order. She raised her tone and the moderator changed the subject. “The back-and-forth between me and Shaffer ended up as a story in its own right. But I never got my answers. Shaffer has since continued offering both broad analyses andarguments against Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon competitors, always as an academic, never disclosing her role as adviser,” Michel writes.

Perhaps it’s not fair to single out Shaffer; she’s certainly not the only one who has failed to disclose relations with organizations propelling post-Soviet autocracies. Hilary Kramer in late 2012, as Azerbaijan’s civil rights backslide became a full-blown clampdown, Kramer also staked that “Azerbaijan has charted a path for itself that is not ideological, but open.” “Considering Azerbaijan currently boasts twice as many political prisoners as Russia and Belarus combined, the claim is, at the least, questionable. To Forbes’ credit, Kramer has not written for the publication since her relationship came to light. But Shaffer, for one, continues to make the rounds—with NPR, with the BBC—without pointing out that her position as an official adviser with Baku undermines any claims she has to objectivity. These people continue to peddle their work, failing to disclose but willing to buff the autocracies swamping the post-Soviet landscape. They’re part of alarger nexus of public-relations swill aimed at drowning out human rights concerns in the region. Unlike the questions Shaffer lobbed at me, their conflicts aren’t personal—they’re business,” the author writes.

 Source: https://newrepublic.com/political-ad-database

 Radio Liberty: Brenda Shaffer’s testy respond to question about her ties with SOCAR

A political scientist’s ties to Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy giant SOCAR sparked a testy exchange at a Columbia University discussion on European energy on October 23 when a student asked the scholar about her ties to the firm, reads the article published on the site of Radio Liberty.

According to the article Brenda Shaffer, a professor at Israel’s University of Haifa, responded to a question about her failure to disclose her links to SOCAR by grilling her interlocutor — journalist and Columbia graduate student Casey Michel – to which she replied that part of the American way is a right to privacy.

In early September, the American newspaper “The New York Times” published an article by Brenda Shaffer about the Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions, where, however, was no note about the author’s ties with the Government of Azerbaijan. Later “The New York Times” added to the article “Editor’s Note”, which states that the article did not disclose the fact that the author was an advisor to the head of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, despite the fact that Shaffer signed a contract according to which she was to report on the conflict of interest, real or potential.

According to the article, the exact role of Schaeffer at Columbia University event was also unclear. Under the previous version of the ad on the event, Shaffer was awarded as the “moderator”. In the updated version, however, another name was announced as a moderator. During the event, she was introduced as “a panelist,” but Shaffer quick fix her interlocutor. “Moderator”, she said.

As given in the article, critics accuse Azerbaijan of Baku attempts to present the country as an energy partner, at the same time, western politicians and human rights activists register growth of repressions and worsening of human rights condition in Azerbaijan.

 Source: http://www.svoboda.org/

 Azerbaijan’s Opinion-Shaping Campaign Reaches ‘The New York Times’

Earlier this month, “The New York Times” published documents demonstrating Azerbaijan’s efforts to expand its relationship with think tanks in the United States to bolster U.S. public opinion of the country and make it clear that Baku “is an important security partner.”

“It is a campaign that produced real results,” the September 6 report stated.

Three days later, the very same newspaper published an op-ed about Azerbaijani-Armenian tensions without disclosing the author’s ties to the government in Baku.

The op-ed argued that Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region might become “Russia’s Next Land Grab,” as the piece’s headline warned, after the Kremlin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea territory in March.

The September 9 piece was penned by Brenda Shaffer, a political-science professor at Israel’s University of Haifa who is currently a visiting researcher at the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CEREES) at Georgetown University.

What the author’s tagline did not reveal is that Shaffer has worked as an adviser “for strategic affairs” to Rovnag Abdullayev, president of Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR energy giant.

Deflecting Attention From Crackdown?

SOCAR and Azerbaijan have been lobbying Washington and the European Union to regard Baku as an energy partner while downplaying or ignoring the country’s authoritarian government and dismal human rights record.

When shown a photograph of Shaffer’s SOCAR business card, “The New York Times” responded on September 17 by attaching an “editor’s note” to Shaffer’s op-ed saying the piece “did not disclose that the writer has been an adviser to Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company,” even though Shaffer “signed a contract obliging her to disclose conflicts of interest, actual or potential.”

Gerald Knaus, chairman of the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative think tank, says Shaffer’s article correctly points out that all of Russia’s neighbors are concerned about Moscow’s aggressive policies in Ukraine.

He disagrees, however, with what he calls the “subtone” of the piece that “the West should support whatever the Azerbaijani government is doing, which is an argument that one has heard a lot from people associated with Azerbaijan or even lobbyists for Azerbaijan.”

Rebecca Vincent, a former U.S. diplomat in Baku and an independent human rights activist, told RFE/RL in an e-mail that “Azerbaijani officials seem to be using [the Ukraine crisis] and other regional events to deflect attention from the ongoing human rights crackdown in the country, which is now worse than perhaps ever before.”

“There are now a reported total of 98 political prisoners in the country,” Vincent wrote.

Azerbaijani officials have repeatedly brushed off Western criticism of its rights record, portraying it as biased and inaccurate.

Lobbying For Baku

Shaffer did not respond to numerous requests to comment for this report. CEREES Director Angela Stent also did not respond when asked to comment.

SOCAR spokesman Nizameddin Guliyev, however, told RFE/RL that Shaffer had not worked for SOCAR. “I have worked at SOCAR for seven years,” Guliyev said. “I haven’t heard that she has worked for this company.”

Nonetheless, it is evident Shaffer has presented herself as Abdullayev’s adviser since at least as early as 2013. She appears in that capacity on the program of a Budapest workshop on energy trade from March 18, 2013.

 An energy-industry source who asked not to be identified told RFE/RL that Shaffer introduced herself that way earlier this year as well and showed a SOCAR business card.

In other cases, however, Shaffer does not mention her work for SOCAR. Her biography on Georgetown University’s website mentions that she once was an adviser to the government of Israel, but omits her affiliation with SOCAR.

On June 15, she published an op-ed in “The Washington Post” identifying herself only as a Georgetown visiting researcher, the same description she used for her August 3 piece for “The Wall Street Journal.”

An occasional Reuters columnist, Shaffer has used other media appearances as well to tout Azerbaijan as a partner to the West and a potential crucial player in European energy security while not disclosing ties to SOCAR.

In an interview with “Platt’s Energy Week” in May about whether Azerbaijan can “ease Europe’s energy woes,” the moderator described her only as a “visiting professor, researcher, expert in this Eurasia area with Georgetown University.”

In the interview, Shaffer called Baku’s decision to condemn Russia’s annexation of Crimea in a UN vote “very important.” “It was not easy for Azerbaijan to be one of the only countries bordering Russia that actually voted with the United States on this. A very difficult decision,” she said.

 Playing The Energy Card

Shaffer has also testified at committees and subcommittees in both houses of the U.S. Congress. On June 11, she testified at a hearing of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, where she was identified only by her Georgetown affiliation.

“In the past two decades, the U.S. has asked for Azerbaijan to join it in security initiatives that were important to Washington,” she told the hearing. “Baku has always answered these U.S. requests, despite the fact that they often prompted serious responses and consequences from Russia and Iran.”

In addressing Baku’s often-criticized human rights record, Shaffer said “the long-standing U.S. policy that rests on the premise that a ‘vibrant civil society creates stability’ ignores the fact that in many parts of the world, elements of civil society are connected to foreign countries, which have no interest in democracy or stability.”

Her comments received positive coverage in Azerbaijan’s state media.

In July, Shaffer testified on “European energy security” before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on European Affairs, again identifying herself only as a Georgetown and University of Haifa academic. She argued, as she often does, for U.S. support for the SOCAR-led Southern Gas Corridor.

In April, Shaffer delivered a presentation on European energy security to Congressional staffers at a Capitol Hill briefing. The other speaker at the April 11 event was Rauf Mammadov, SOCAR’s representative in the United States.

Shaffer has publicly portrayed condemnation of Azerbaijan’s rights record as misplaced. In an October 2013 article by the Azerbaijani Contact news agency about U.S. criticism of Azerbaijan’s October 9 presidential election, Shaffer was quoted as saying that “Azerbaijan is frequently criticized, but other countries have real problems.”

She was quoted as saying that the people of Azerbaijan trust Aliyev because he has brought “peace, stability, and economic development.”

 rferl.org