Author: Tadevosian Garnik

PanARMENIAN.Net

Oskanian to attend Georgian President inauguration
15.01.2008 15:00 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian delegation headed by
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian will depart for
Tbilisi to attend the inauguration of Georgian
President elect Mikheil Saakashvili on January 20, RA
MFA Spokesman Vladimir Karapetian told a
PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

Delegations from some 40 states including Kazakhstan,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Turkmenistan, Turkey,
Ukraine and Estonia will arrive in Tbilisi.

The Herald, UK
Jan 12 2008

Why am I pessimistic about this optimism?

IAN BELL

It is, I think, a wonderful world in which Tony Blair is "cautiously
optimistic". For an entire decade he was optimistically cautious. In
that time, the Lebanon got levelled, hundreds were murdered, children
died, peace in the Middle East was forgotten and brother Blair found
nothing of interest to report. Least of all to the detritus of a
once-great socialist party, or even to a simple, stupid democratic
parliament.

Then some other war-thing intervened. Out of the blue, you
understand. There was some fuss, apparently, about some stuff. Then
everyone forgot. Faces saved. Gosh.

Beirut, like Tony, was rebuilt, of course. Yet again, the world
became a happier place. Then Mr Blair somehow became "an envoy" –
yours? mine? – in the Middle East. Now, today, this morning, he is
optimistic. Cautiously.

Having spent many years on this fruitless study, off and on, my best
guess is that our previous Prime Minister has decided to give himself
a Nobel Prize. For peace, no doubt. Unlike all those before him – a
big hand for Mr Balfour, ladies and gentlemen – Mr Blair really
thinks he can fix this one.

advertisementOr at least, if the Nobel committee is watching,
convince the rest of us that a tragedy has been fixed. In particular,
he appears to believe that he can call in his many favours to
President Gee-What?

On my reading, Mr Blair this week persuaded Mr Bush to travel to the
east end of the Med, say a couple of things that Israel might later
discount without difficulty, and look presidential. I don’t think –
though you never know – that a Republican "October surprise" is in
the offing. That one will happen in the Arabian Gulf. But you can
never can, really never, tell.

The fascinating thing about Mr Blair is that his personal time-line
appears not to coincide with most ideas of history. Bush,
transparently, is doing the usual late-presidential thing: finally
turning up to pretend to care about anyone Israel regards as a
threat. Huzzah.

Give them back some land, he says, and be nice. Don’t mention
history, don’t mention dispossession or despoliation and don’t ever
mention any of the strange parallels by which their plight and your
former plight begin to seem even slightly similar.

Anyone who says otherwise is, obviously, a tourist, George will say.
"And a terrorist," Mr Cheney will add, from behind the curtain.

Unpick this stuff, though. Why does the government of the biggest,
most powerful, sovereign state on the planet never, ever, dispute the
foreign policy decisions taken in a place the size, roughly, of
Wales? It is, intuitively, odd. But it also happens to be the case
that a small fire-storm is blazing in American academic circles, just
at the moment, over the mere suggestion that there is such a thing as
an Israel lobby.

Just by typing that, I know what is liable to follow. Libels follow.
But just by typing "libels follow", I entitle myself to ask what has
been done for the Armenians, lately, or for their spiritual
descendants, the Palestinians. The problem involved in writing about
America and Israel, as it affects the Middle East, is the problem of
anti-Semitism. And that implied insult, as a historic gag, won’t shut
everyone up forever.

Bush goes to the wrong end of the Med bearing platitudes. Israel will
not, once or ever, bear the idea that it might have treated a people
unjustly. The "international community", not least its Islamic
members, will not allow the revolutionary forces of Palestine out of
their box. This much we know.

Daft George is easy to grasp: he’s on the farewell presidential tour,
making dull speeches and crafting dull platitudes, like all the small
world a pocket Elvis, but talentless. Still strewing damp souvenir
neck-wear around concert halls in countries he’s never heard of,
however. And always missing the point. Peace in Palestine? Who gives
a Congressional vote? That one wasn’t in the damned briefing notes,
Dick.

Blair is, not for the first time, another matter. To render things
down to their fundamentals: what’s he doing there, why is he doing it
and for whom?

If our former Prime Minister is about to achieve justice for
Palestine, that will not count, I think, as a bad thing. If Mr Bush,
equally, is about to make an executive order on behalf of the
luckless and pillaged of the region a big, very simple and true word
is available. Here it comes. Good.

But why is Tony Blair, the Prince of Basra, reporting himself this
week as optimistic ("cautiously") that peace between the state of
Israel and its victims can be contrived "within a year"? Because
George, the almost-former President, says so?

"The Americans" is easy, as a handy conspiracist explanation. "Nobel
Prize" is even easier. Blair’s ego will work for most of the usual
purposes of rough satire. It is an oddity, nevertheless, that people
in these islands have decided both to forget the man who ran their
lives for an entire decade, and to stop wondering what he did next.
He’s doing it. To, or for, Palestine. Is this, suddenly, none of our
business?

The point about Palestine is a point, equal but not necessarily
opposite, about Israel. (Ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs,
please.) What was once done to the Jewish people soaks through all
the things we might say, write or think, if we do think, about the
behaviour of states. I could say the same about the Armenians. But as
a certain Mr Hitler once observed, who remembers them?

You could laugh at good old laughable Tony and his lousy,
so-very-typical cautious, boyish optimism. You could, for who has
not?, have a Doonesbury moment, or a Michael Moore chuckle, at George
the accidental idiot President. Might keep you going for an hour on a
cold January day. Might not. But then wonder: what keeps the people
of Palestine going, this weather? "Terrorists", mostly, and
democratically-elected terrorists, too.

There is a chasm in international affairs. Most of it has to do with
"terror". But if a Tony Blair can bridge that gap who, sensate, has a
right to object? If even a George Bush doing his valedictorian
routine can help Palestine, what are your jokes, or mine, worth? They
had better be good jokes.

The plight of those Semitic people is not liable to be ameliorated by
a Bush or by a Blair. On the other hand, it will not be helped just
because I damn a political chancer. That is not how things happen.
Blair, Nobel or not, has been put in place as someone’s stooge. Bush
wants his legacy, in the imperial style. So how might any of this aid
Palestine?

The alternative, remember, is the gun, and the bomb, and "the
struggle". That choice is made by people who believe they have been
bombed, once too often, and lied to. I return to those questions for
which I have no answer.

Who hired Mr Blair as my "envoy"? Why did he say not a word when the
Lebanon was being levelled? And why am I supposed to pretend to care
when George Bush is pretending to care?

Each of the alternatives turns out, God help us, to be worse than the
last.

tures/display.var.1960932.0.Why_am_I_pessimistic_a bout_this_optimism.php

Lragir, Armenia
Jan 11 2008

LEVON TER-PETROSYAN: THOSE WHO ASK THIS QUESTION SHOULD PROTECT

How will you protect your votes on February 20 if on February 19 the
government tampers and steals them? The reporters asked this question
to Ter-Petrosyan on January 11 who held his first news conference
since his political activity. The first president said with certain
irony that this issue is raised substantially by a number of media.

`How shall we protect our votes? It is a fantastic question. Those
who ask this question should protect them. They cannot demand that I
protect the votes. There is a government, there is a Constitutional
Court, there is a Prosecutor General, there is a Central Election
Commission. What are they for? They are supposed to protect the votes
of people,’ Levon Ter-Petrosyan says. According to him, nothing will
change in the country until this consciousness becomes established.

`As to me, as to what I will be doing, if I see that the votes were
tampered, I will do what I have been doing so far. Knowing my rights,
knowing our Constitution, the laws, the international laws, the
international legislation, I will take all the moves stemming from
this legislation. Demonstration, walkout, piquet, trial. This is
going to be my track,’ Levon Ter-Petrosyan says, noting that he is
not going to break fences like Vazgen Manukyan in 1996, at whom the
reporters hinted as the victim of the first tampered election.

`I am not going to break fences like the man you hinted at, I am not
going to seize buildings, break the head of the speaker of
parliament. That candidate failed for that reason. In 1996 he got
41-42 percent, in the next election he got 13 percent, in 2003 he got
0.9 percent. This is the attitude of people toward this terrible, how
shall I put it, blow at the state in 96,’ Levon Ter-Petrosyan says
noting that people do not accept this style of work.

By the way, the first president does not think either that the
presidential election of 1996 was falsified. He says Vazgen Manukyan
appealed to the Constitutional Court against election fraud but was
unable to prove it. `I respect his opinion and belief. However,
politics is neither opinion nor belief. Politics is a legal process
connected with the state,’ Levon Ter-Petrosyan says noting that since
the election of 1996 Vazgen Manukyan has submitted the records of
over 1000 polling stations to the court but could not prove.

`There were about 1039 records of 1600, there were inaccuracies in
several dozens of records,’ Ter-Petrosyan says noting that thousands
of such inaccuracies can be found in every election.

`It is a legal process. This is not a problem that Manukyan or I
should solve. There was a legal process, the CEC made a decision, the
Constitutional Court made a decision, the international observation
organizations observed irregularities, drawbacks in some commissions,
but they recognized the outcome of the election,’ Levon Ter-Petrosyan
says. According to him, the international observers did not recognize
the elections in Albania and Belarus, in Armenia in 1996 they
recognized.

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINSTER CONSIDER IT DIFFICULT TO REACH AGREEMENT ON REGULATION OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT BEFORE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN ARMENIA

Trend News Agency
Jan 9 2008
Azerbaijan

Vardan Oskanian, the Foreign Minister of Armenia, stated that it
would be difficult to reach to an agreement on regulation of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict before the presidential election in the
country, scheduled on 19 February.

Mediamax reports that the Armenian Minister stated during the
press-conference that the achievement of an agreement on the issue
before the presidential election in Armenia would be better. Speaking
about the development of peace regulation of the conflict in 2007,
the Armenian Foreign Minister noted that the sides succeeded to reach
some progress on some issues, in spite that the several principles
still have not been agreed.

Oskanian stated about the readiness of Armenia, to continue the
negotiations on the basis of existing proposal concerning the
self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Oskanian noted
that in 2008, the most activities would be observed over regulation
of the conflict.

CJSC ARMRUSGASPROM BONDS TRADING AT ARMENIAN EXCHANGE EXCEEDS $736,000

arminfo
2008-01-10 15:59:00

ArmInfo. Trading of CJSC ArmRusgasprom bonds that were listed at
Armenian Exchange (ArmEx) in September 2007 exceeded 221 million drams
(about $736,000), the company reports.

The source reports that CJSC ArmRosgaprom bonds were leaders for
the last 4 months by the trade volume. This positive tendency was a
result of dynamic growth of the financial and economic figures and
high rating of the company.

The company is known to enter securities market for the first time
in 2007 by placing 1 million drams nominal coupon bonds issued in
June-July.

Investors took a great interest in the issue of bonds and now
demand exceeds supply. Not only commercial banks but also other
organizations and individuals acquired the company’s bonds. It means
that ArmRusgasprom’s bonds are considered a reliable and high-liquidity
financial instrument, specialists say.

In 2008 the company intends to remain actively engaged in the market
of corporate bonds and issue bonds not only in Armenia but also in
Russia. The company’s policy allows attracting additional funds
for implementation of various investment projects and boosting
securities market of Armenia, which is not less important, the
company’s specialists say.

To recall, CJSC ArmRusgasprom completed the initial offer of its
coupon bonds worth 1 billion drams consisting of 100,000 bonds worth
10,000 AMD each on July 4 2007. Maturity of bonds is 10 months. The
annual interest rate is 9 percent. CJSC Cascade Investments is
the underwriter which is represented in the secondary securities
market as market-maker for ArmRusgasprom’s securities. The company
reports that both commercial banks and any institutional investors,
other participants in the market, enterprises from different sectors
of economy and individuals responded to the issue of bonds. The CJSC
ArmRusgasprom Board of Directors approved the first issue bonds on May
20 2007. Recently, it has approved the second issue of bonds worth 5
billion drams. The company may start IPO in the domestic market and
abroad in future.

CJSC ArmRusgasprom was founded in December 1997 and is an exclusive
importer of natural gas to Armenia. Due to the additional issue of
$111.8 million bonds by the CJSC ArmRusgasprom, its authorized capital
grew from the previous $280 million to $391.8 million. OJSC Gazprom
increased its share in the authorized capital of CJSC ArmRusgaspron
from the previous 45% to 57.59%. The share of the Armenian Government
decreased from 45% to 34.7% and that of ITERA decreased from 10%
to 7.71%. The company planned an additional issue of bonds for $190
million in 2007. Relevant information will be made public after the
company’s financial report for 2007.

FOR SATISFYING NORMAL VITAL ACTIVITY

Azat Artsakh Tert
Jan 8 2008
Nagorno Karabakh Republic

At the conference convened on January 7th by the NKR Prime Minister
A.Haroutyunian, the situation arisen because of unfavourable weather
in the republic was discussed. Because of oncoming frost and heavy
snow, problems arose in the spheres of roads, electricity and water
supply. The executives of corresponding departments informed the head
of the Government, that works were done for abolishing the accidents
and impediments.

By the information of the NKR Minister of urban planning A.Mamounts,
Goris-Stepanakert highway was operatively controled, which then
was open.

Because of the accidents of water-pipes, a number of buildings
of Stepanakert are not supplied with water. The Prime Minister
A.Haroutyunian demanded special attention to especially that problem.

He assigned tasks to the participants of the conference, emphasizing,
that today’s stuff and technical innerpower should keep ready for
overcoming quickly the expected weather complications, for satisfying
normal vital activity of the population. (Administration of relationts
with the NKR Government’s information and community).

CAMPAIGN IN THE UNITED STATES FOR TER-PETROSYAN

Lragir
Jan 7 2008
Armenia

The news release of the U.S. center of support for Levon
Ter-Petrosyan informs that on December 28 from 9 pm to 1 pm of
the next day the U.S.-Armenia telephone campaign took place at
Glendale, California. "The citizens of Armenia participating in
the campaign called on the citizens of Armenia to take part in the
upcoming presidential election to prevent the reproduction of the
bandit regime and vote for Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the candidate of the
opposition. During the live broadcast of the campaign the organizers
of the campaign appealed to the citizens of Armenia living in the
United States and all the Armenians who care for the future of
Armenia to call on their relatives living in Armenia to vote and
to protect their vote. A number of Armenian Americans joined the
campaign at the studio. Many others phoned the studio and encouraged
the participants of the campaign to hold more such events. Hence,
along with congratulations thousands of citizens of Armenia will get
an appeal from their relatives who are living in the United States to
rid of the khanate system which is being established in our homeland,"
runs the release.

US-TURKEY MEETING AMID BETTER RELATIONS
By William C. Mann

Associated Press
Tuesday January 8, 2008 12:01 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Turkish president’s visit to the White House is
seen as a major sign of improved relations between NATO allies after
five years of acrimony over the Iraq war and U.S. policy on Turkey’s
fight against Kurdish rebels.

President Abdullah Gul’s meeting with President Bush follows a visit
by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan two months ago that
resulted in a commitment by Bush to share intelligence on Kurdistan
Workers’ Party, or PKK, rebels and not to object to Turkish airstrikes
against the Kurdish guerrillas’ installations in northern Iraq.

The two sides have even established a coordination center in Ankara so
Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information. The first Turkish
airstrike was Dec. 16 and used intelligence shared by Washington. Two
days later, a small Turkish ground force invaded Iraqi Kurdistan to
flush out Turkish Kurds sheltering there. Washington tacitly approved.

The PKK has been fighting for two decades to win a Kurdish homeland
in Eastern Turkey.

The meeting with the Turkish leader comes as Bush prepared to leave
later in the day on his first major trip to the Mideast to try to
build momentum for peace in that troubled region.

Speaking about Turkish-U.S. relations with Turkish reporters last
month, Gul said: "Things are going well at the moment. Intelligence
is being shared.

Now there is a cooperation befitting our alliance. Both of us are
satisfied.

This is how it should be. We could have come to this point earlier."

In the months leading to Erdogan’s Nov. 5 White House appearance,
however, U.S.-Turkish relations were at their lowest point in many
years.

In 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq war, the Turkish parliament
rejected U.S. requests to send troops into Iraq through Turkish
territory. And a poll last summer showed just 9 percent of Turks saw
the U.S. favorably.

Despite pleas from the Bush administration and personal appeals from
Gul, then foreign minister, and other prominent Turks, the House
Foreign Affairs Committee passed a nonbinding resolution last year
that described as genocide the World War I-era deaths of Armenians
during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey reacted by
withdrawing its ambassador from Washington.

Despite the improved situation since the Erdogan-Bush meeting, the
situation remains touchy.

"Certainly there is far greater satisfaction in Turkey than there
was as late as three months ago," John Sitilides, chairman of the
Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, said Monday. "It’s all related to the PKK. Now the
United States is seen not as an entity that is holding the Turkish
military back but is working with Turkey."

Still, Sitilides said, Turkey could "respond recklessly" to perceived
U.S. mistreatment with grievous results. "There are 150,000 U.S. troops
on the ground in Iraq whose well-being would be jeopardized if Turkey
decided on an action such as closing off access to the flow of war
supplies."

Gul is having breakfast on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and is meeting Bush for talks and lunch. His schedule released
in Ankara said he also will meet with Vice President Dick Cheney on
Tuesday and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday before flying
to New York to meet at the United Nations with Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon.

For his part, Bush leaves later Tuesday on his first major trip to
the Mideast, arriving in Israel on Wednesday. He also will stop in the
Palestinian-governed West Bank, which he toured in 1998, and make his
first visits to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi
Arabia. He plans a brief stop to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik,
Egypt, which he visited in 2003.

Bush’s primary goals for the trip are to try to build momentum
for the troubled peace process and encourage broader Arab-Israeli
reconciliation.

Only Egypt and Jordan now have peace agreements with Israel. The
trip also is intended to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the troubled
region and efforts against terrorism.

While in the United States, the Turkish president is to meet with
representatives of the Meskhetian Turks. A minority group ousted
from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the Meskhetians were bounced
around to other Soviet republics until settling in Krasnodar Krai,
a territory of Southern Russia.

The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program undertook
what it calls one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in
2005-2006 to bring as many as 18,000 Meskhetians to about two dozen
cities in the United States.

Dafka
Jan 2 2008

Ideology over Integrity in Academe
By James R. Russell
The Current (Columbia University)
Fall, 2007

s/fall2007/ideology-over-integrity-in-academe.html

Is this Columbia University? A professor of anthropology calls for a
million Mogadishus, a professor of Arabic and Islamic Science tells a
girl she isn’t a Semite because her eyes are green, and a professor
of Persian hails the destruction of the World Trade Center as the
castrating of a double phallus. The most recent tenured addition to
this rogues’ gallery is to be an anthropologist, the principal thrust
of whose magnum opus is the suggestion that archaeology in Israel is
a sort of con game meant to persuade the unwary that Jews lived there
in antiquity.

I could refute the claims that Nadia Abu El-Haj makes in her book,
but respected specialists have done so already in Isis, the Journal
of Near Eastern Studies, and elsewhere. Facts on the Ground fits
firmly into the postmodern academic genre, in which facts and
evidence are subordinate to, and mediated by, a "discourse." There is
no right or wrong answer, just competitive discourses. It does not
come as news that people employ the data of archaeology to prove
points of interest to them – information in any discipline used by
human beings does not exist in a vacuum. But, as reviewers noted,
Facts on the Ground expands upon this insight, quite unremarkable in
itself, to propose that Israeli archaeologists use altered or
falsified data and do so to a single ideological end. That purpose is
to demonstrate a previous Jewish sovereignty and long historical
presence that did not in fact exist, thereby to cloak the "colonial"
essence of Zionism. This aspect of the book is malign fantasy.

Though alumnae of Barnard have declared they will stop giving money
to Alma Mater if El-Haj is tenured, it is unlikely their protests
will have any effect. She is fully supported by other ideologues in
positions of power at Columbia and by outspokenly anti-Israel
academics around the globe. Most of the good lack all conviction, as
usual.

How did we come to this? Anti-Zionism has a long, diverse history,
and the moral horror of the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s did not
diminish its appeal. In the early days of Zionism, in the early 20th
century, many Jewish leftists rejected the idea of mass emigration to
a historical national homeland and opted instead for the Bundist
programme of a Yiddish-based Jewish polity in a Diaspora environment.
The Soviets opposed the Bund but Zionism and Hebrew even more,
supporting Israel only briefly on tactical grounds in the late
1940’s. Stalin drew away from Israel and began the anti-Semitic
campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans." The word translated as
"rootless" is Russian bezrodnyi, a far more potent term composed of
the negating prefix bez-, "without," plus the root rod-, which means
anything from "birth" to "deeply-felt intimacy" (the adjective
rodnoi) to "the Motherland" (Rodina) itself. Stalinist policies
re-institutionalized in Russia an anti-Semitism in which Jews were
shunned as homeless – barely human – by their very nature. In this way,
the very qualities of selfless internationalism that Jewish leftists
had assiduously cultivated in the cause of world revolution were
turned against them.

The Soviet posture strengthened anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist trends
in the Western Left; and when Israel, a democratic state, became
increasingly alienated from the Eastern bloc and joined in alliance
with France, Britain, and, later, the United States, Leftists saw
this as confirmation of its imperialist nature. Winning the Six Day
War in 1967 did not help: if only the Jews could be cuddly victims
again. But it was hard for the New Left to remain loyal to the
imbecilic Soviets, and the flirtation with Mao could not last long.
The Third World became the cause du jour, and especially the Arab
world and the Palestinian terrorist movement.

Further help came from Columbia, from Edward Said’s 1978 book
Orientalism, which proposed a vague socialist agenda, a conspiracy
theory, and a new set of victims of imperialism quite unlike the
Soviets. These were of course the Arabs – and it was even better that
the proximal villain was the ever-sinister, colonizing, comprador
Jew. But there is a problem. Said dealt with the 18th and 19th
centuries, for the most part, but the Arabs were not the political
player in the region then: Ottoman Turkey, a powerful empire and seat
of the Muslim Caliphate, ruled them. Millions of Christian Greeks,
Romanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Armenians labored under Ottoman
misrule too. The first four broke away, but the Armenian homeland was
in Anatolia itself. So in 1915, during World War I, the Turks decided
upon genocide, and carried it out.

Said did not mention the Armenians even once in his book, for it
would have made his passive, victimized Islamic world look rather
less passive and not at all the victim. It is a glaring omission.
Said’s book was properly dismissed by many prominent reviewers as
amateurish and dishonest – though on other grounds. They did not even
notice the Turkish and Armenian aspect. The book might have been
consigned to well-deserved oblivion.

But a year after its publication, revolution erupted in Iran. And
Orientalism would become the guidebook and intellectual primer for a
new wave of "anti-imperialism." Following the overthrow of the Shah,
Khomeini’s radical Islamic followers proclaimed an Islamic
revolutionary ideology with many of the same romantic and apocalyptic
features that had attracted the masses – and armchair revolutionaries
here – to Communism. (An amusing aside: Harvard held an exhibition and
symposium in May 2007, partially funded by our Provost’s Office, on
posters of the Iranian revolution. I was asked to present a paper on
Soviet propaganda art, then hurriedly disinvited when the organizers
realized, as they said to me, that comparing the Iranian masterpieces
to those of an atheist régime might offend President Ahmadinejad. One
is touched that Harvard is so alert to the sensitivities of a
Holocaust denier who murders gay people and routinely calls for the
incineration of Israel. So much for academic integrity on the banks
of the Charles.)

Gradually, Middle East studies as we knew it at Columbia disappeared,
to be replaced by what you have now. As it seems to me, Middle East
studies at Columbia and elsewhere has become politicized; and other
branches of the humanities have also fallen prey to ideology. Where
university administrators do not actually share such extreme views
and methods, they are anxious to preserve the appearance of
tranquility and due process in the interests of the institutional
image, even if that appearance is utterly superficial. I therefore
doubt that any challenge to El-Haj can succeed; and perhaps efforts
within universities like Columbia waste energy that might more
effectively be channeled elsewhere. Jewish kids will keep on taking
Lit Hum and enjoying convivial Shabbat dinners, but in a real sense
the battle at Columbia may be lost.

What is to be done? When Berlin was divided and the Communists seized
the Humboldt University in their half of town, refugee scholars
founded the Free University in West Berlin. What have you in New York
City? NYU is not much different from Columbia. But there are two fine
institutions of learning in Manhattan where genuine Near Eastern
studies, untainted by Jew-baiting, apologia for terrorism, and
unscholarly chicanery, might find a home, aided perhaps by the
donations of alumnae and alumni of Barnard and Columbia. The nearer
one to Columbia is the Jewish Theological Seminary on 122nd Street
and Broadway. The farther one (in Arabic, al aqsa – and with its noble
neo-Moorish dome and minaret the appellation almost fits) is uptown,
in Washington Heights: Yeshiva University. Instead of writing angry
letters to Lee Bollinger, alumni can pool their resources to help
create rival MEALAC departments; and Columbia students desirous of an
authentic education in subjects like Middle Eastern history can earn
their transferable credits there.

But, one might say, Jews have fought so hard to get into the Ivy
League. Yes, and Jews in Europe fought hard for emancipation, too:
some learnt skills and lessons along the way that proved useful when
they realized it was time to go and rebuild our own country. Others
held on and wouldn’t leave. There is an old story about people who
wandered and came to a plain, where they settled and built a village.
But the place turned out to be the back of a great fish: it dived,
and they drowned. So, there is another great university, actually a
number, but a bit farther away. I have in mind the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and the other universities of Israel. It is particularly
appropriate to support them now, when they are threatened by boycott.

The Free University of Berlin is a historical example of how one can
cultivate an alternate research center of higher quality than ones
that have been corrupted, where efforts at reform yield diminishing
returns. But there is an example closer to home. I was graduated from
Columbia College in 1974 and delivered the Salutatory address on a
medieval Armenian mystic. Professor Nina Garsoian had developed in
the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department (MEALAC)
a great program in Armenian Studies, and I was the first
undergraduate joint major in the subject. But the subject has
languished since her retirement in 1993. (I was denied tenure at
Columbia in 1992 and shortly thereafter was appointed to America’s
oldest chair in the field, here at Harvard.)

After a series of farcical "searches," MEALAC last semester offered
the Armenian position, at only a junior level, to a former pupil of
mine. Carefully considering the character of the search process
itself and the state of the subject and of Near Eastern studies at
Columbia overall, she declined the post, accepting instead a job as
director of the Zohrab Center, a library and research and cultural
institute at the Armenian Diocese in Manhattan. The Zohrab Center and
Harvard’s Armenian Studies program have already begun our first joint
project, bypassing Columbia altogether – leaving it behind its
ideological Berlin Wall.

This latest scandal leads me finally, though, to grimmer reflections.
In nazified Dresden,the Jewish professor Victor Klemperer – not Otto,
the conductor, but the academic whose book LTI (Lingua Tertii
Imperii) was the first study of the jargon to which the Third Reich
reduced German – noted that people of every class and profession except
his own had helped him now and then through the Hitler years. His
fellow academics, though, were fascist enthusiasts, unwilling to
help. Nothing of equivalent horror is going on today, but perhaps the
amorality of Klemperer’s colleagues should be a warning against
expecting that because men are learned, they must also be right.

When I wrote "What is to be done?" I had in mind Nikolai
Chernyshevsky’s Chto delat’; so let me close with a marvelous verse
of the Russian Jewish writer Isaac Babel. I think of it when I walk
down 116th & Broadway, and see all that ivy concealing all that rot.
Tvorchestvo vo dvortsakh ne vodvoritsya. "Creativity will not take up
residence in palaces." Or in plain American, "Include me out."

James R. Russell
Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University

mp;PageID=1846

Georgy Vanyan: "Ambassador of Peace Rauf Radjabov visiting Armenia has
turned into a fierce hater of Armenians upon arrival in Baku"

28 December 2007 [12:43] – Today.Az

"The events "A Step to Dialogue" and "Days of Azerbaijan" are
completely different things. The first is a long-term program of our
organization, which was initiated last year, while our arrangements in
school started two weeks before the arrival of guests from Azerbaijan",
Georgy Vanyan, chairman of the Caucasus Center of Peacekeeping
Initiatives, said, commenting on Rauf Radjabov’s statement, which
states that Armenians tried to set up the event "A step to Dialogue"
for the "Days of Azerbaijan in Armenia".

He said the Days of Azerbaijan were held at school and even were not
over with the departure of the guests.

"Pupils of the educational complex of Mkhitar Sebastatsi were thinking
and writing about Azerbaijan. It was their first meeting with
Azerbaijanis, during which they were able to communicate with
Azerbaijanis, ask questions and inform of themselves. The art contest
is going on and the exhibition of the placard and pictures will open in
2008. What is it if not the Days of Azerbaijan?" Vanyan said.

He noted that Rauf Radjabov suggested to change the name of the "Days
of Azerbaijan" stating that arrangement of such events is a prerogative
of the presidents. According to Vanyan, Radjabov did not make any other
comments on the program.

"I answered that the official name of the project, he was invited for,
is "A step to Dialogue" and there are not any problems in this issue".

Upon arrival to Yerevan, Rauf Radjabov insisted on the withdrawal of
the word combination "Days of Azerbaijan" from the already printed
program, according to Vanyan, who said Radjabov voiced concern over
publications in press, which stated that the Days of Azerbaijan in the
educational complex of Mkhitar Sebastatsi had transformed into the Days
of Azerbaijan in Armenia, while the guests of the project into a
delegation.

He said Radjabov could leave the country on the first day. But he did
not do it. But he did not participate in the Days of Azerbaijan in
Mkhitar Sebastatsi educational complex, as he did not read
compositions, did not award prizes or communicate with schoolchildren.

He said in fact the ambassador of peace Rauf Radjabov turned into a
fierce hater of Armenians upon his arrival in Baku.