No Shea at Sussex

Dr Jamie Shea, currently NATO Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General, has been invited to the post of Visiting Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex for a period of three years.

During the period of his Lectureship, Dr Shea will remain a paid employee of NATO. As such he will, and indeed can only present the NATO approved interpretation of both security as a concept and of current and historical conflicts with which his employer has been engaged - namely the Kosovo campaign from 1999 and the current involvement in Afghanistan.

Over and above the quite apparent conflict of interest between the paramount principles of independent, critical teaching and scholarship within Higher Education and the role of a paid spokesperson for an organisation currently prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, this appointment is to be opposed on two further grounds.

Firstly, Dr Shea’s own professed opinion on the goal of NATO media strategy is anathema to the goals of academia. Dr Shea has previously stated that journalists should be kept “as busy as possible […] Keeping journalists occupied is the priority; feeding them constant briefings so they don’t have much time to go off and find out information for themselves”[1]. Similarly for Shea, academic experts are to be invited on NATO tours and subsequently encouraged to pen “influential op-ed features and columns which are often sympathetic to our case”.[2] The further encroachment of such a relaxed approach to objectivity is to be strenuously resisted in our Universities.

Secondly, the invitation given to Dr Shea to lecture at Sussex is a tacit validation of the organisation he represents. This organisation was accused of violating humanitarian international law by Amnesty International during its 1999 bombing campaign in Yugoslavia[3], is under various investigations for the conduct of its operations in Afghanistan, especially following the recent Wikileaks exposé[4], recently justified unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan with the entirely unsubstantiated claim that these prevented ‘Mumbai-style’ terror attacks in the UK, France and Germany[5][6], and in September of this year had its supply routes into Afghanistan blocked by Pakistan after reports that a NATO helicopter killed three Pakistani soldiers in the second cross-border intrusion in five day period[7].

[1] Jones, N. 2009, ‘Nato strategist Jamie Shea gives chilling insight into military’s media control at times of war’ London, May 1, 2009, http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/blogs-mainmenu-29/nicholas-jones-mainmenu-85/5279-nato-strategist-jamie-shea-gives-chilling-insight-into-militarys-media-control-at-times-of-war [accessed 16 October 2010]
[2] Ibid
[3] Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2000 - Yugoslavia, Federal Republic of, 1 June 2000, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6aa1118.html [accessed 16 October 2010]
[4] ‘Afghanistan: Call for NATO accountability on civilian deaths after Wikileaks publication’ posted on 26th July 2010, Amesty International UK, available at: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18911 [accessed 16 October 2010]
[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/29/terror-attack-plot-europe-foiled [accessed 16 October 2010]
[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/01/limit-the-drones-pakistan [accessed 16 October 2010]
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/pakistan-blocks-nato-route-afghanistan [accessed 16 October 2010]