Armenian Genocide scholar cancels lectures at University of Illinois

PanARMENIAN.Net - A leading scholar of the Armenian genocide, Taner Akcam, has canceled his plans to speak at the University of Illinois in protest at the firing of professor Steven Salaita, The Electronic Intifada reports.

In August, the university terminated Salaita’s appointment as associate professor in the American Indian studies program only a few weeks before he was slated to begin teaching. Salaita had used Twitter to denounce Israel’s attacks on Gaza in the period leading to that decision.

Salaita lashed out at university administrators Monday, Oct 6 for overreaching in their decision not to hire him. Salaita, a Palestinian-American who studies colonialism and the Middle East, criticized the university board members, who he said "have zero qualifications to evaluate my teaching or scholarship," and universities more broadly for everything from "siding with Israel" to high administrative salaries and the reliance on part-time adjunct faculty. According to Chicago Tribune, he said he is not anti-Semitic, as some have said, but that he "opposes the policies of the state of Israel."

Akcam, a professor in Armenian genocide studies at Clark University in Massachusetts, was invited to come to the University of Illinois by Michael Rothberg, a scholar on genocide and the Holocaust. Rothberg has been a vocal critic of the university’s actions regarding Salaita, and first shared Akcam’s letter articulating why he would not deliver any lectures at the university on a blog.

Akcam had been invited to give two lectures on campus; one on the First World War, and another about Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide.

In an email message to The Electronic Intifada, Rothberg wrote, “I am very disappointed that my colleagues and students won’t get a chance to hear from [Akcam] this semester, but I understand his decision. As he makes very clear in his powerful statement, freedom of speech and academic freedom are very personal issues for him. It was an act of conscience for him to decide not to visit our campus at this time.”

In Akcam’s letter, he lists his numerous and life-threatening experiences of living in Turkey, where marginalized ideas and speech are easily criminalized, before writing: “So, I know the value of freedom of speech and the weight of it resides deep inside my flesh and bones.”

Akcam is regarded as one of the first Turkish academics to openly acknowledge and discuss the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turkish Ottoman government. He has led a life antagonistic to how the Turkish government treats its minorities, first working for a leftist journal scrutinizing his government’s mistreatment of the Kurdish minority in Turkey and then in his unequivocal stance on the Genocide.