On April 24, 2026, REEEC M.A. student Jared Meunier presented a Noontime Scholars Lecture titled “Sharp Power and the Enjoyment of Crisis: The Mueller Report as Simulated Justice.”
Meunier, a second-year M.A. student in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, examined how autocratic influence can exploit the media and political structures of liberal democracies. Using the Mueller Report as a case study, he argued that institutional transparency does not always restore public trust and may instead prolong uncertainty and deepen polarization.
Felipe De Los Santos, also an M.A. student in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, described the lecture as deeply informative and highly relevant to today’s media environment.
“I had the tremendous pleasure of attending Jared Meunier’s presentation on his thesis, ‘Sharp Power and the Enjoyment of Crisis: The Mueller Report as Simulated Justice,’” Felipe said. “It was a deeply informative talk in which he covered several theoretical concepts that are becoming increasingly important to our media ecosystem and, by extension, our daily lives. He applied these concepts to media coverage of the Mueller Report. My biggest takeaway from Jared’s talk was the concept of sharp power, which is the ability of state actors to disrupt the political and social processes of other states without the need for direct intervention. In other words, it is institutional sabotage using actors within the system.”