BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR RESIGNS OVER DISPUTE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PanARMENIAN.Net
07.07.2008 17:49 GMT+04:00
The issue that has roiled U.S.-Turkish relations in recent months "how
to characterize the mass killings of Armenians in 1915" has set off
a dispute over politics and academic freedom at an institute housed
at Georgetown University. Several board members of the Institute of
Turkish Studies have resigned this summer, protesting the ouster of a
board chairman who wrote that scholars should research, rather than
avoid, what he characterized as Armenian Genocide, The Washington
Post reports.
"Within weeks of writing about the matter in late 2006, Binghamton
University professor Donald Quataert resigned from the board of
Governors, saying the Turkish ambassador to the United States told
him he had angered some political leaders in Ankara and that they
had threatened to revoke the institute’s funding.
After a prominent association of Middle Eastern scholars learned
about it, they wrote a letter in May to the institute, the Turkish
prime minister and other leaders asking that Quataert be reinstated
and money for the institute be put in an irrevocable trust to avoid
political influence.
The ambassador of the Republic of Turkey, H.E. Nabi Sensoy, denied that
he had any role in Quataert’s resignation. In a written statement,
he said that claims that he urged Quataert to leave are unfounded
and misleading.
The dispute shows the tensions between money and scholarship, and
the impact language can have on historical understanding.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed when the Ottoman Empire
collapsed after World War I. Armenians and Turks bitterly disagree
over whether it was a campaign of genocide, or a civil war in which
many Turks were also killed," the edition says.
The Turkish studies institute, founded in 1983, is independent from
Georgetown University, but Executive Director David Cuthell teaches
a course there in exchange for space on campus.
Julie Green Bataille, a university spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail,
"We will review this matter consistent with the importance of academic
freedom and the fact that the institute is independently funded and
governed." The institute’s funding, a $3 million grant, is entirely
from Turkey.