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Ambassador\u00a0<\/span>Vesko Gar\u010devi\u0107<\/a>, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was interviewed for a\u00a0Politico <\/em>article on protests in Montenegro over the inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the article, titled “Montenegro rocked by violent clashes over church independence<\/a>,” Gar\u010devi\u0107 discussed how the weekend’s events are the result of the weaponization and politicization of the church by both sides of the political spectrum. The country has been split over the church since the previous government transferred church property from the SOC to the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, “whose independence is not recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the main Eastern Orthodox authority.” The decision to hold the inauguration ceremony in Cetinje was seen by some as a show of force by the SOC as it was the royal seat of the country and the center of its independence efforts. On this, Gar\u010devi\u0107 commented that “the violent means used by the protesters in Cetinje overshadowed the legitimate reasons and revulsion felt by people in Montenegro with the inauguration being held in Cetinje.”<\/p>\n The full article can be read on\u00a0Politico<\/em>‘s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n During his diplomatic career, Ambassador\u00a0<\/span>Vesko\u00a0Gar\u010devi\u0107<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro\u2019s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro\u2019s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School. Learn more about Ambassador Gar\u010devi\u0107 on his\u00a0<\/span>faculty profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cUnfortunately, the violent means used by the protesters in Cetinje overshadowed the legitimate reasons and revulsion felt by people in Montenegro with the inauguration being held in Cetinje.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17823,"featured_media":41358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8410],"tags":[11784,9884,1165,9658,8864,2056,9656],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50336,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50333\/revisions\/50336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}