Brenda Shaffer


Brenda Shaffer is an American scholar who holds positions as visiting researcher and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Fellow with the Atlantic Council and professor at University of Haifa. Shaffer was the former research director of the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and past president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. She specializes on energy in international relations and energy policy in the Caspian region and has written or edited several books of these topics, including "Energy Politics" and "Beyond the Resource Curse." Shaffer has also written a number of books on the topic of identity and culture in the Caucasus including explorations of Azeri literature and culture.

Biography

Shaffer was born in the United States in about 1965. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, attending Burlingame High School. In 1982, while still at high school, she made her first visit to the USSR.. She received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University and is currently a visiting researcher and adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. She is on sabbatical from the University of Haifa, where she is a professor in the School of Political Science.
Previously, Shaffer taught at the department of Asian Studies and at the Graduate School of Management, division of natural resources management, at the University of Haifa. and was the research director of the Caspian Studies Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she had been a postdoctoral fellow at the International Security Program. Shaffer has also held positions as president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association, researcher and policy analyst for the Government of Israel and visiting professor with the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, and she provides energy industry research and consulting to businesses and governments.
Shaffer is the author or editor of a number of books and has given Congressional testimonies on several occasions in front of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs on issues related to U.S. policy in the Caspian region. She frequently provides commentary and analysis on energy issues and international policy in the Middle East and Caspian region, including recently for CNBC, CNN, Fox News, The Financial Times, Bloomberg News, National Public Radio, The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and numerous others.
Shaffer reads a number of languages, including English, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Russian, and Hebrew.

Short Bio

Books

Prof. Shaffer's articles have appeared in a number of newspapers and journals, including an article in "Current History" entitled "Is there a Muslim Foreign Policy?" and "Iran at the Nuclear Threshold". Her Opinion Editorials have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, and The Jerusalem Post.
On the book "Energy Politics", Michael L. Ross, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los-Angeles and one of the leading experts on oil in international relations wrote:
Scott Pegg, of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis added:
On the book "Beyond the Resource Curse", Svante Cornell of Johns Hopkins University wrote:
In a review to CHOICE Magazine, B. J. Peterson wrote:
On the book "Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity", Camron Michael Amin, an associate professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn wrote:
Hamlet Isakhanli, President and Founder of Khazar University, Baku, Azerbaijan, added to "Borders and Brethren":

Criticisms

Shaffer's book, "Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity" received criticism from Touraj Atabaki, a professor of social history at the University of Amsterdam and a senior research fellow at the International Institute of Social History, who wrote that:
Shaffer's article "U.S. Policy toward the Caspian Region: Recommendations for the Bush Administration" has also created controversy with regards to the objectivity of Harvard's Caspian Studies Program. Ken Silverstein, of Harper's Magazine, in an article titled "Academics for Hire", comments:
Shaffer has also drawn criticism for writing on geostrategic issues regarding Azerbaijan under her academic affiliations, while working as a consultant to the President of SOCAR, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. On September 17, 2014, The New York Times published an editor's note to highlight that Shaffer did not disclose her affiliation to SOCAR when publishing an Op-Ed in its pages about the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This has drawn criticism in other notable news outlets.