Jugoslavija – država koja je odumrla

Dejan Jović and his book Jugoslavija – država koja je odumrla (Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away), published in 2003, were heavily criticized by the Serbian historian and professor of history at University of Belgrade Olivera Milosavljević in reviews and articles published by now inactive Serbian weekly magazine Republika where she claimed that the book contains numerous falsehoods, contradictions and un-academic methodology, citing his downplay of the SANU Memorandum and describing an apologetic depiction of Slobodan Milošević, among other things.^[24][25]

2014 book review

In 2014, when serving as the senior advisor to the President of Croatia, in his book review for the Croatian Political Science Review Jović express approval of the book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia written by David N. Gibbs and published by the Vanderbilt University Press in 2009.^[26] Gibbs' book was criticized by Marko Hoare who accused Gibbs of denying the genocide in Srebrenica, promoting conspiracy theories and eschewing or falsifying sources.^[27] Jović's positive review of the book caused the North American Congress of Bosniaks of "silently denying Serbian aggression and genocide".^[28] Hoare previously criticized Jović's own book Slobodan Milošević's Place in Serbian History, accusing the author of being an apologist of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army during the war in the 1990s.^[29][30] Jović responded by stating that the accusations are "completely tendentious and incorrect, and the campaign itself has political rather than academic motives", he also defended Gibbs by claiming he had never denied genocide in Srebrenica, that he is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Arizona whose book had a number of positive reviews in academic journals, and that the same people who are now accusing him as a genocide denier for a book review have previously accused many others of the same, including the Washington Times and The Guardian.^[31] His claims were, however, disputed by Hoare in a subsequent response to his response which stated: "It is dangerous to both Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina for someone holding such views, and with such poor analytical judgement and grasp of reality, to occupy the position that he does."^[29][32]

2014 remarks on the 1991 Independence referendum

During the same year, Jović was sacked from his political advisory position by president Ivo Josipović after he claimed in his article that 1991 Croatian independence referendum was "very non-liberal. Maybe they were 'democratic' if by 'democracy' we mean only the determination of those who have more and who less [votes]. But they were certainly not liberal"^[33] and that it can not be compared with Scottish independence referendum arguing that, unlike the Croatian one, every opinion was considered legitimate and was equally present in public debate. This statement was described by president Josipović as "harmful and wrong" who expressed his opinion on incomparability of situation in Croatia (Yugoslav crisis) and Scotland (established democracy) at the time of two referendums.^[34] President sacked Jović quoting differences of opinion shortly before the 2014–15 Croatian presidential election, while politicians from major opposition right-wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) expressed opinion that he was sacked because his opinions were damaging Josipović's re-election prospects.^[35] The left-leaning British political website OpenDemocracy opined that sacking of Jović was the result of "(re)establishment of a certain dogmatism in interpreting or discussing about the past".^[36] Balkan Insight described Jović's statements as "highly controversial", and cited denunciations by some politicians from both Social Democratic Party (SDP) and HDZ, while 24sata columnist Tomislav Klauški criticised Josipović's move instead and asked if it is possible to comment meaningfully and non-passionately the independence referendum 23 years after it took place.^[33]

Other criticisms

Former professor emeritus of history at Yale University and a consultant for the Bosnian Institute, Ivo Banac, described Jović as an "ordinary falsifier of history", while in the same interview political analyst Žarko Puhovski commended Jović's argumentation as better than average in Croatian scientific community.^[37]

In 2017, a docent at the Faculty of Political Sciences in the University of Zagreb, Krešimir Petković, filed a request for Jović to be removed from the editorial board of Croatian Political Science Review, accusing him of "giving academic legitimacy to forgeries" and the "absence of academic procedures of fact checking" following the publication of an article on Croatia–Slovenia border disputes by German political scientist and European People's Party spokesman Thomas Bickl.^[38] Petković claimed that the article was uncritical towards the Drnovšek–Račan agreement and that without evidence Bickl ascribed agreement's failure to Croatian traumatic experience in the period of the Croatian War of Independence.^[38] Petković ultimately resigned from the position of one of the reviewers for the journal.^[38]

In 2021, following Jović's statements on Twitter,^[39] in which he described President Zoran Milanović's remarks towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and Milorad Pupovac as "cultural racism", he was subsequently described by Milanović as a "Kumrovec undertail" in a Facebook post on his official profile.^[40] In his Facebook response, Milanović criticized Jović for publishing his post in English, berated his scholarly credibility and electoral legitimacy of Milorad Pupovac, stated that a Croat from Vojvodina would never dare to speak like Jović and described Belgrade as a bazaar.^[40]