Boston University launching minor in Genocide, Holocaust studies

November 2, 2016 By administrator

Boston University will launch a new minor in Holocaust and genocide studies, BU Today reports.

Although genocides large and small have been perpetrated throughout human history, the courses will focus on historical events since 1900. These include the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire had rounded up and deported or executed 1.5 million Armenians living there, most of them Ottoman citizens, by 1922; the Nazi Holocaust, from 1933 until the Allied liberation of the death camps in 1945, which claimed the lives of six million Jews and five million Slavs, Roma, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents from the European countries occupied by Germany; the Cambodian genocide, from 1975 to 1979, when the Maoist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot slaughtered an estimated three million; the Serbs’ “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnians in the wake of the 1992 collapse of the former Yugoslavia, killing 100,000; the 1994 Hutu-led killing rampage in Rwanda, which targeted Tutsis and moderate Hutus and slaughtered more than 800,000 over 100 days; and most recently, this century’s Sudan state-sanctioned murder of at least 300,000 Darfurian civilians in what is now South Sudan.

Instead of viewing these atrocities as distant in time and place, an emphasis is being placed on studying them as a mirror to present-day conflicts and simmering hatreds. The multimedia coursework also answers the more urgent question, could it happen again? The answer is yes—in fact, as the coursework illuminates, attempts at genocide could likely rise from many simmering ethnic, religious, and political conflicts in the world today.

Hate is a learned emotion, says Simon Payaslian, the Charles K. and Elizabeth M. Kenosian Professor of Armenian History and Literature. “We’re not born with it. It can be unlearned. Genocide can happen anywhere.”

Payaslian, who teaches courses in genocide prevention, notes in his course descriptions that the subject of genocide warrants rigorous study because genocidal acts and atrocities persist despite the 1948 United Nations adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention, criminalizing genocide in the realm of international law, was institutionalized in 1951, and yet it has failed to prevent the string of genocides that has occurred since then.

According to its description on the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies website, the minor in Holocaust and genocide studies offers students “an opportunity to acquire basic academic tools of description and analysis of the various factors that contribute to the emergence of ultranationalist regimes and their genocidal policies.” The minor is also designed to help students “develop an awareness of the value of pluralism and an acceptance of diversity, as well as to explore the dangers of remaining silent, apathetic, and indifferent to the vilification and oppression of others.”

Quebec urged to make genocide study compulsory in schools

February 11, 2016 By administrator

Orphans-from-Kayseri-1929-1 Too many Quebec students finish high school with no knowledge of genocides, past or present, including the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Rwandan genocide and the cultural genocide of First Nations, a Montreal-based foundation argued on Wednesday, February 10, according to Montreal Gazette.

The Foundation for the Compulsory Study of Genocide in Schools had Liberal MNA David Birnbaum table a petition in the National Assembly demanding that the topic be made mandatory in Quebec high schools. It is currently up to individual teachers to decide how much they want to teach about genocide, the foundation said.

“I’ve seen teachers who have done amazing jobs with their high school students; they put on exhibits, they take their students to the Holocaust museum, they learn about the Armenian Genocide, and other schools that I’ve gone to where teachers have come up to me saying ‘We’re very, very worried, our children are graduating from Grade 11 not knowing even what the word genocide means,’ ” foundation chairperson Heidi Berger said.

The petition, which collected about 3,000 signatures, states that “racial and cultural intolerance and discrimination are the preconditions associated with the beginnings of genocide,” which is defined as “the systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic or cultural group.” Education, the petition continues, is the key to recognizing and preventing discrimination and acts of hate among youth, and knowledge of genocides is essential to preventing such acts in the future.

“Considering the times that we’re in, 25,000 Syrian refugees coming in, 16- and 17-year-olds with the radicalization and ISIS and so forth, with the cultural genocide and the Aboriginals, there’s no time like now to make sure that every student graduating from Grade 11 understands what genocide is and the stages that lead to genocide,” Berger added.

Catherine Poulin, press attaché for the education minister, said there is already a compulsory class that deals with genocide called “Contemporary World.”

“At this point, it is not our intention to change the curriculum,” Poulin said.

New York Times: A new study confirms the date of Moses of Khoren for the birth of Armenia

March 15, 2015 By administrator

An article in the New York Times this week quoted the latest genome analysis proving the date of birth of Armenia claimed by a former Armenian historian.

“Moses of Khoren, historian of the fifth century, wrote that his native Armenia was established in 2492 BC, a date usually considered legendary although he claimed to have traveled to Babylon and consulted old documents. But is he lucky or he really had access to useful data because a new genome analysis suggests that this date is entirely plausible, “wrote Nocholas Wade in the New York Times on March 10.

According to the article, geneticists have scanned the genomes of 173 Armenians from Armenia and Lebanon and compared them with those of 78 other people around the world.

“They found that the Armenians are a mixture of ancient populations whose descendants now live in Sardinia, Central Asia and many other regions. This mixture occurred from 3000 to 2000 BC have calculated geneticists which coincides with the date proposed by Moses of Khoren for the foundation of Armenia, “says the article.

“This study confirms the DNA in outline much of what we know about Armenian history,” says Hovann Simonian, a historian of Armenia affiliated with the University of Southern California by city The New York Times.

“Towards the end of the Bronze Age, when the mixture was underway, there was considerable movement of peoples caused by increased trade, war and population growth. After 1200 BC, the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age have suddenly collapsed, an event that appears to have caused the isolation of Armenians by other populations. No significant mixing with other people after this date can not be detected in the genomes Armenians say geneticists “according to the New York Times.

“The isolation was probably supported by many characteristic aspects of Armenian culture. Armenians have a language and a distinctive alphabet, and the Armenian Apostolic Church was the first branch of Christianity to be established as a state religion in 301, before the Roman Empire in the year 380 “adds the article states that” researchers also see a genetic divergence signal that developed there about 500 years between the Western and Eastern Armenians. The date corresponds to the onset of wars between the Ottoman and Safavid dynasties and the division of the Armenian population between the Turkish and Persian empires. “

“The genetics team, led by Marc Haber and Chris Tyler-Smith of the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, see the isolated populations like the Armenians as a way to reconstruct the history of the people.”

“The Armenians have 29 percent of their DNA ancestry with Otzi, a man whose mummy 5300 years emerged in 1991 from an Alpine glacier. Other genetically isolated populations of the Middle East, as Cypriots, Sephardic Jews and Lebanese Christians also have many ancestry with the Iceman while other Middle Easterners as Turks, Syrians and Palestinians, much less. This indicates that the Armenians and other isolated populations are closer than the present inhabitants of the Middle East Neolithic farmers who brought agriculture in Europe there are about 8,000 years. “

The Vahe and Armine Meghrouni Lecture Series in Armenian Studies

October 29, 2014 By administrator

Thursday, November 6, 2014

1010 Humanities Gateway, UC Irvine Campus

6:00 PM Reception

6:30 PM Lecture

“Memory and Identity: A Journey Through Historic Armenia”

by Professor Barlow Der Mugredchian

Please join us on Thursday, November 6th for the first lecture in the Vahe and Armine Meghrouni Lecture Series of the 2014-2015 academic year. UCI School of Humanities had a last-minute opportunity to secure Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Professor of Armenian Studies at Fresno State, to come speak at UCI next week, and we wanted to capitalize on this fabulous opportunity.

Complimentary Parking in Lot 7
A formal invitation with full details will be sent by week’s end. Please contact Marijana Lekousis at marijana@uci.edu with any questions.

The group on the repairs of the Armenian Genocide Issues Final Report

October 1, 2014 By administrator

The Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group (Group on Armenian Genocide reparations AGRSG) has completed its final report “the resolution of Justice – Reparations for the Armenian Genocide.” The report provides a comprehensive historical analysis of unprecedented dimensions legal, political and ethical implications of the issue of reparations for the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, including specific recommendations for the elements of a set of comprehensive repairs.

Before the formation of the AGRSG in 2007, limited to repairs to the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 included speeches abstract notions return territoroires, consider particular aspects such as lawsuits against insurance companies, academic works and others focused on a specific part of the whole subject, and sometimes short precious works dealing with the issue but no overall or detailed analysis.

The AGRSG was formed in 2007 by four experts in the different fields of theory and practice repairs. Their mission was to produce the first systematic, comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the issues raised by the repair Armenian genocide. Initially funded by a grant from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) (1), members are Alfred de Zayas AGRSG, Jermaine O. McCalpin, Ara Papian, and Henry C. Theriault (President). George Aghjayan served as special adviser.

After a quick agreement that some form of compensation is an appropriate remedy for the legacy of the Armenian genocide as it is today, the AGRSG prepared a preliminary report, which was released for limited distribution in 2009 . Completion of the project was followed by three symposia. The first analysis was a panel discussion with three of the authors of the report, which was held May 15, 2010 at George Mason University in the United States, in collaboration with the Institute of the University and for the conflict resolution. The second was an important one-day symposium with the four co-authors and a number of other experts on reparations for the Armenian genocide, conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law through International Human Rights Law Association on October 23, 2010 The third was a lecture by two of the authors of the report, which was held in Yerevan, Armenia, on December 11, 2010 The AGRSG today publishes a wide dissemination of its final report, a comprehensive review and update of the 2009 preliminary report.

The final report of the AGRSG remains the only all-encompassing, systematic approach and thorough repairs on the Armenian genocide. The report examines the case of repairs via historical legal and ethical perspectives, (parts 4, 5 and 6, respectively), with a plan for a repair process based on the theory of transitional justice and practice (part 7), and offers a pack of repair mechanism (Parts 3 and 8). The report also includes a background on the Armenian Genocide (Part 1) and damage caused by it and its impact today (Part 2). Due to its wide distribution, this report fills a critical gap in scientific work and political discourse on the Armenian genocide. It will allow the Turkish and Armenian as well as civil society and political institutions of the information people and analysis tools to engage on the issue of the Armenian genocide in a systematic manner that supports the resolution.

The present time is optimal for the report. The year of the 100th anniversary of the start of the genocide in 2015, will see a greatly increased international interest of policymakers, researchers, media, artists and the public in the genocide. In addition, in recent years, reparations for the genocide happened a marginal concern to a central location in the popular and academic circles. Much of the focus was on individual repair legal cases piecemeal. This report represents a decisive step towards a much broader and global repair that is adequate to solve the vast damage of the genocide process. In addition, a real commitment, not denial vis-à-vis the legacy of the genocide develops in Turkey. Finally, in the last decade, there has emerged a global movement of repairs involving many groups of victims through a set of massive violations of human rights. The Armenian case has a place in this movement.

The full final report will be available in PDF format online. The introduction and summary of the final report are already available on the site.

http://www.armeniangenocidereparations.info/

Information on AGRSG and report may be addressed to Henry Theriault to htheriault@worcester.edu, +1 (508) 929-8612, or the Department of Philosophy, Worcester State University, 486 Chandler Street, Worcester, MA 01602, USA

1. positions and perspectives expressed in the report are those of members of AGRSG alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.