Shaffer was the former research director of the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard Kennedy School and past president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.
[1] According to the 2019 book Lobbying in the European Union: Strategies, Dynamics and Trends, published by Springer: "research shows that her [Shaffer's] entire career has benefitted from financial support from sources tied to Azerbaijan's leadership".
Shaffer is the author or editor of a number of books and has given congressional testimonies on several occasions in front of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs on issues related to U.S. policy in the Caspian region.
[10][11][12][13][14] In 2014, she failed to disclose her ties to the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan when she wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about Russia's role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, prompting the newspaper's editors to add a note after its publication.
[12][15] The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) described Brenda Shaffer as a Lobbyist, who "used oil money to build her academic credentials" and in exchange promoted pro-Azerbaijani positions, for example concerning Nagorno-Karabakh, and lobbied for Baku's agendas through multiple newspaper op-eds and media appearances, congressional testimony, countless think tank events and scholarly publications.
[31] Discussing the incident, Eurasianet commented that "[t]o Caucasus watchers intrigued and depressed by the way Baku uses its oil wealth to buy praise and influence abroad, Shaffer is infamous.