ARMENIAN GROUPS SLAM UNIVERSITY FOR HONORING AHMADINEJAD
Ben Harris
JTA Wire Service
Baltimore Jewish Times, MD
Oct 29 2007
Armenian Americans slammed the decision by a university in the Armenian
capital of Yerevan to honor Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad during a state visit to Armenia last week was presented
with a gold medal and an honorary doctorate Monday from Yerevan
State University.
An editorial in the Armenian weekly, the house organ of the Armenian
National Committee of America, condemned the university, noting that
Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who has disregarded historical
research.
"The university’s decision to bestow an honorary doctorate is simply
unacceptable," the editorial said. "We are surprised that as the
officials in charge of the alma mater of a nation that rose from
the ashes of another genocide, they did not take this fact into
consideration before deciding to award the honorary degree."
Ahmadinejad’s visit came as Armenian Americans and their supporters
continued to press for a resolution in Congress recognizing the World
War I-era killings of Armenians by Turkey as genocide.
Part of their campaign has focused on the Anti-Defamation League,
which initially refused to use the word genocide to describe the
killings but backtracked amid opposition from its leadership in the
Boston area — home to one of the highest concentrations of Armenians
in the country. The ADL called the massacre of Armenians "tantamount
to genocide."
Despite the shift the ADL, along with other major U.S. Jewish groups,
continue to oppose a congressional resolution out of concern for its
impact on Turkish ties with Israel and the United States.
Consequently, the Armenian activists’ campaign against the ADL has
not eased.
A Web site, No Place For Denial, continues to accuse the ADL of
genocide denial, alleging that its statements on the subject have
been ambiguous, a charge the ADL denies. The continuing momentum has
led several communities in the Boston area to end their partnerships
with a highly regarded anti-bigotry program sponsored by the ADL.
Dikran Kaligian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of
America’s Eastern Region, rejected the suggestion to mount a similar
campaign against Yerevan State University, asserting that such a
comparison was "apples and oranges."
The proper analogue to the ADL, Kaligian said, is not Yerevan State
but ANCA, which is the largest Armenian grass-roots organization in
the United States. The organization is an affiliate of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, an international political party founded
in 1890.
Kaligian said ANCA has never taken an ambiguous position on the
Holocaust. The ADL, by contrast, has endorsed a proposal for Armenia
and Turkey to form a joint commission to arrive at a resolution of
the issue, a step Armenians adamantly reject.
"The ANCA has never called for further study of the Holocaust,"
Kaligian said. "That’s the analogy you have to make, and I think
we’ve been very clear on it."
Both Kaligian and Sevag Arzoumanian, who runs No Place for Denial,
agree that it was appropriate for Ahmadinejad to be invited to Armenia,
a landlocked country that depends on good relations with its neighbors
for trade and energy. But they said bestowing an academic honor was
one step too far.
In an e-mail to JTA, Arzoumanian wrote, "How can Yerevan State
University give an academic degree, however symbolic, to someone
who takes the intellectually dishonest position that there needs
to be further research and academic conferences to determine if the
Holocaust occurred? What were they thinking? I think the YSU made a
terrible error of judgment, both academically and morally."
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