In a June 15 op-ed in Al Jazeera America, history professor Kate Brown examined the impact of Russia’s foreign agents law on the country’s civil society and environmental activists. The law requires organizations that receive funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, and the law as it was originally written excluded environmental advocacy groups. However, Brown wrote in her column that the law has recently been used with broad application to abolish NGO’s that prevent development in Russia. “The ease with which the law can be abused could spell disaster both for Russian civil society and environmental regulation.” With the …