May 25, 2021
CONTACT: Kait Howard
Cell: 443-301-7993
kehoward@jhu.edu jhunews@jhu.edu

Anne Applebaum
As world leaders protest the Belarusian government’s brazen interception of a plane carrying a dissident journalist, Johns Hopkins University senior fellow Anne Applebaum can describe the political situation in Belarus, and how the incident fits into a pattern of increasing authoritarianism in countries across the globe.
Applebaum is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute, where she co-directs LSE Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st-century propaganda.
In an op-ed published by The Atlantic this week, Applebaum wrote: “This is a story that belongs alongside the Russian use of radioactive poisons and nerve agents against enemies of the Kremlin in London and Salisbury; Saudi Arabia’s brutal murder of one of its citizens inside a consulate in Istanbul…and Beijing’s kidnapping and detention of Chinese nationals living abroad and foreign citizens of Chinese origin….All of these cases form part of what is becoming a new norm.”
A staff writer for The Atlantic, Applebaum has written several books on Soviet history, communism, and authoritarianism, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History, and, most recently, Twilight of Democracy.
To request an interview with Applebaum, please contact Kait Howard, kehoward@jhu.edu.
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