Dejan Jović

Dejan Jović
Born	1968[1] Samobor, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (modern day Croatia)[1]
Occupation	political scientist

Dejan Jović (born 1968)^[1] is a full time professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb. He completed undergraduate studies in Zagreb (1990)^[2], master level studies in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Manchester (England) (1994)^[2] and PHD studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1999).^[1] In the period of 2010-2014 Jović was the main political analyst for the President of Croatia Ivo Josipović.^[2] Jović has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a lecturer at the Scottish University of Stirling.^[3] Since 2015 he is guest professor at the University of Belgrade.^[1] In an interview he explicitly described himself as being both Croat and Serb, acknowledging that such a complex self-determination may cause shock among both communities exposed to totalitarian nationalism and unaccustomed to liberal political tendencies.^[4]

Dejan Jović is the main editor of the Croatian Political Science Review journal since 2013.^[1]

Controversies

In 2014, when serving as senior advisor to president Ivo Josipović, in his book review for the Croatian Political Science Review he highly praised the book "First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia" written by David N. Gibbs and published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2009. The book is considered controversial for denying the genocide in Srebrenica and glorifying Croatia's territorial dismemberment. He was thus accused by the North American Congress Of Bosniaks of "silently denying Serbian aggression and genocide".^[5] British historian Marko Attila Hoare accused him of being an apologist of Slobodan Milošević and the JNA during the war in the 1990s.^[6] Jović defended himself by stating that the accusations are "completely tendentious and incorrect, and the campaign itself has political rather than academic motives", he also defended Gibbs by saying he had never denied genocide in Srebrenica, that he is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Arizona whose book had a number of positive reviews in academic journals, and that the same people who are now accusing him as a genocide denier for a book review have previously accused many, including the Washington Times and The Guardian that they are genocide deniers.^[7] His claims were, however, disputed by Hoare in a subsequent response to his defense, concluding "It is dangerous to both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina for someone holding such views, and with such poor analytical judgement and grasp of reality, to occupy the position that he does.".^[8][6]

During the same year, he was sacked by president Ivo Josipović after Jović claimed in his article that 1991 Croatian independence referendum was "highly illiberal" and that it can not be compared with Scottish independence referendum arguing that, unlike the Croatian one, every opinion was considered legitimate and was equaly present in public debate. This statement was described by resident Josipović as "malicious and false".^[9] President sacked him shortly before Croatian presidential election, 2014–15. The left-leaning British political website openDemocracy opined that sacking of Jović was the result of "(re)establishment of a certain dogmatism in interpreting or discussing about the past".^[10]

References