Professor of Chechen History Ponders Brief Contact with Boston Bombing Suspect

Brian Glyn Williams teaches Chechen history, as a professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

That’s the same college attended by Boston Bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Williams had brief contact with him, when Tsarnaev was a high school student and researching his Chechen roots for a school project.

“I’ve had a little criticism for providing him with information on Chechnya,” Williams says. “But that’s like criticizing someone for giving information to an Irish person about Ireland for fear that they might join the IRA. It doesn’t make any sense.”