[5] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Jasanoff was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature.
"[6] Her guest essay in The New York Times on the day of the death of Elizabeth II in which she wrote that the Queen had "helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation"[7] prompted a backlash on social media,[8] including from the paper's readers.
[9] Jasanoff published her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, with Alfred A. Knopf in 2005 and received mostly favorable reviews.
"[11] However, in The American Historical Review, University of Pennsylvania English professor Suvir Kaul said Jasanoff's history of "objects and individuals, no matter how lovingly recollected, do not add up to an argument that historians should think of empire as instantiating 'the essential humanity of successful international relationships'," and underestimate the "concerns of those peoples who were at the receiving end of imperial power, whether that power was exerted by Europeans or by the native elites who functioned increasingly at their command.
"[12] In The New York Times, Columbia University history professor Mark Mazower found "a high degree of wishful thinking" in Jasanoff's casting 18th- and early 19th-century empire as less asymmetrical domination and more "the kind of happy cross-cultural fusion that we dream about today".
[18][19] In The New York Times, Thomas Bender called it a "richly informative account", "smart, deeply researched and elegantly written".
[34] She also published an essay in The New York Times describing the portion of her journey in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the piece drew criticism.
[35] In a letter to the editor, Boston University professor Timothy Longman said the essay "reeks of condescension" and "continues the widespread practice of ignoring the voices of Congolese intellectuals, many of whom write about their homeland with nuance.