Svante Cornell

Education

Cornell studied at the Department of the International Relations, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Peace and Conflict Studies from Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden.

Career

From 2002-2003 served as the course Chair of the Caucasus Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute of the United States. Department of State. He also briefly taught at the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. Due to an article he wrote on the 2008 South Ossetia War, Cornell was criticized by Mark Ames in The Nation.

Ames rejected Cornell"s New York Times op-ed that placed the blame for the conflict squarely on Russia"s shoulders.

Similar criticisms were voiced in connection with a book on the war co-edited by Cornell. In 2006, journalist Ken Silverstein criticized Cornell for apparent conflicts of interest related to a consulting company he headed.

American journalist Joshua Kucera, in his article about Cornell"s 2010 book Azerbaijan Since Independence, thinks that "Cornell is generally pretty pro-Azerbaijan, and his framing of the situation as something inevitable seems to absolve Azerbaijan of any responsibility for its actions, which I think one could quibble with. But he knows Azerbaijan well, and this is an analysis worth considering." In 2016, Cornell told a conference that "I notice that the Washington Post has published nine editorials on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan in the past two years.

I haven’t seen that about Saudi Arabia, about Vietnam, about Turkmenistan, about many other countries Azerbaijan looks pretty good in comparison to

Achievements

• Cornell has received an honorary doctorate from the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Azerbaijan Since Independence (Studies of Central Asia and the Caucasus) by Svante E. Cornell (2010-12-23)