Hare on The Current on Julian Assange’s Legacy
Amb. Paul Webster Hare, Senior Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed for a radio segment on the legacy of Wikileaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Hare was interviewed for an April 12, 2019 segment on the Canadian Broadcasting radio show The Current entitled “Assange’s Legacy Could Be Undermined By His Own ‘Selfish Attitude’: Former Diplomat.”
From the interview:
“He highlighted an issue, which is you know transparency and openness and the use of the Internet, but I think increasingly he used it for his own ends,” said Paul Hare, who was a British diplomat for 30 years.
Hare pointed out that while Assange rose to prominence through his efforts to disrupt diplomacy, he also took refuge in “a diplomatic mission for nearly seven years” to avoid extradition. During that time, Hare said that Assange “inconvenienced many people,” including those who paid and lost security money for his bail.
“I think he’s shown essentially quite a selfish attitude, and perhaps that will be how he will be remembered, rather than the wider causes, which he did espouse.”
You can listen to the entire interview here.
Amb. Paul Hare teaches classes at Boston University on Diplomatic Practice, Arms Control, Intercultural Communication and on Cuba in Transition. In Spring 2016 he will offer a new class on Public Diplomacy. His novel, “Moncada – A Cuban Story”, set in modern Cuba, was published in May 2010. His book “Making Diplomacy Work; Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World.’ was published in early 2015.