To Professor Jerry Meldon and the Tufts Faculty Progressive Caucus:
It has come to my attention that your organization hosted an event on Oct. 21 called "Mainstream U.S. Media Coverage of Events in Ukraine and Syria: The Power of False Narrative."
I am writing to express my serious disappointment. As a member of the 2014-2015 EPIIC colloquium on Russia in the 21st Century, as someone who has made Russia and Russian participation in international affairs the prime passion and academic focus of his life for years, and as someone who has been closely following the events unfolding in the past 23 months in Ukraine -- from the beginning of the protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti in November 2013 to the Russian Anschluss of Crimea to the Russian invasion and occupation of the Donbass region -- I can testify with strong authority that Mr. Parry's commentary on the Ukraine crisis and Russian involvement in the world is nonsensical, non-factual, misleading and unbecoming of a serious journalist. I was very upset to learn that your organization, which has hosted such respectable and distinguished speakers as Dr. Cornel West and Mr. Noam Chomsky in discussions on which they have established and respected authority, is granting Mr. Parry a platform explicitly on this topic to hawk his obfuscations and factually bankrupt, self-congratulating, delusional ramblings with the airs of legitimacy offered by the crest of Tufts University.
Mr. Parry is fully entitled to free speech, publication and expression. He exercises them regularly on his own website, ConsortiumNews, as well as on his multiple appearances as an "expert" on the notorious English-language mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin's information ministries, Russia Today. He is not entitled to do so at Alumnae Hall. Mr. Parry is entitled to his own opinions, but as Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linus Linkevicius, remarked in September in reference to Russia's war of misinformation across Europe and the former Soviet Union, "A lie is not an alternative point of view."
Tufts has its very own expert on the revolution and subsequent crises in Ukraine in Oxana Shevel, associate professor in the Department of Political Science. Professor Shevel has spent much of the past two years on the ground in Ukraine covering the country's social, political, geopolitical and human stories. If you and your organization are unable to end your speaking engagement with Mr. Parry, I suggest that you extend an invitation to Professor Shevel to give a response lecture at a later point in time. I make this suggestion without Professor Shevel's knowledge and can make no representations about her schedule or availability. Moreover, I do not wish to volunteer her for something she has not signed up for, as Putin has done repeatedly with young men in the Russian military in the past 18 months. However, I can think of no other person in the Tufts community more qualified to speak with authority on the issues that Mr. Parry has endeavored to misrepresent.
Sincerely,
Joel Wasserman
