Mocking the Victims
...I remain deeply concerned about the
insensitivity to horrific human suffering his remarks seemed
to convey.
Christine Todd Whitman,
Governor of New Jersey and
Ex Officio Trustee of Princeton University
There was a
conference November 20-22, 1997 at Princeton
University to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Nanking
Massacre. The organizers have made available
a set of videotapes. The tapes contain remarks by
Norman Itzkowitz, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, as
part of the last panel discussion entitled Healing Past
Wounds: From Conflict to Cooperation. The following is a
portion of his taped remarks. It is from a section of his
talk which deals with "the intergenerational transmission of
attitudes."
Click here for WAV audio.
Click here for AU audio.
When I was the Master at Wilson College here I had a student,
an Armenian, who followed me almost every day and had at least
one meal a day with me and asked me over many, many times how
could I teach the history that I teach. I teach the history
of the Turks. How could I give the students the things to read;
Didn't I know what
the Turks had done to his people?
I'm very slow to anger. After two years I asked him to come
to my office and he came to my office and I asked him, "where
do you get this from? What have you read?"
And he stopped and he said,
"I haven't read anything."
I said, "Where did you get it from?"
He said, "I get it from
my grandmother."
I said, "Well that's typical. Your mother and father are out
working to make enough money to send you to Princeton and
granny's got nothing to do but sit at home and fill you full
of this stuff."
[ laughter from the audience ]
And I gave him a long list of books. I said "read them and
come back." Well he never came back. And the reason is that
all of this ethnic conflict business, I think we have to
understand, at the bottom is irrational. It has nothing to
do with rationality.
They don't want to know anything and
they will not take the time to inform themselves about
what's going on.
Notes:
-
What the Turks had done to his people
- This refers to the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when
over a million Armenians were killed by the Young Turk
government to create a homogeneous state.
- "I haven't read anything"
- The student said no such thing. We've been in contact
with over a dozen alumni of Armenian heritage during the
time that Professor Itzkowitz was Master at Wilson College,
and no one can remember even hearing about such an exchange,
let alone participating in it. When asked who it was,
Professor Itzkowitz claims he couldn't remember the name
of this student he supposedly had a meal with once a day
for two years.
The only alumnus anyone knew who talked with Professor
Itzkowitz about the Genocide flatly denies making the
attributed statements. We subsequently discovered that
Professor Itzkowitz was well aware of what actually was
said. In a book Imperial Legacy: the Ottoman Imprint
on the Balkans and the Middle East edited by L. Carl
Brown, he wrote a more accurate version that confirms
the version of the alumnus:
I had an Armenian student who would berate me for
teaching the history of the Turks and for assigning
certain books he felt were anti-Armenian. One day I
asked him where he got all these notions. Did he know
any Turks, had any Turks ever done anything to him?
No and No. Where did he get his information? He
thought for a moment and then said, from his
grandmother.
It's clear that Professor Itzkowitz took this discussion
and simply invented parts like "I haven't read anything"
to make Armenians look ridiculous.
- grandmother
- Just about any Armenian of that student's generation
is liable to have one or more grandparents who went through
the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The student is obviously
relating his grandmother's experience in the death
marches. The experience of grandmothers has been
treated in two recent books: Black Dog of Fate
by Peter Balakian and Zabelle by Nancy Kricorian.
Here's an interview of a 92
year old survivor that recently appeared in the Boston Globe.
- They don't want to know anything...
- This generalization insults all Armenians. It also serves to
illustrate the anti-Armenian prejudices that exists at Princeton today.
Further Demonization
Denying genocide is the final stage of genocide--it
murders the dignity of the survivors and destroys the remembrance
of the crime.
From Taking A Stand Against The Turkish
Government's Denial
of the Armenian Genocide
and Scholarly Corruption in the
Academy,
a petition signed by two hundred prominent scholars and writers
Here are some other examples of Norman Itzkowitz's attitude
towards the Armenian Genocide and Armenians.
-
Exposing bias
- Professor Itzkowitz's review of a book that discusses the
Armenian Genocide.
- their avarice and treachery
- Professor Itzkowitz's chosen characterization of Armenian victims
of the Abdul Hamid massacres.
- owing its strength to the
homogeneity of its population
- Professor Itzkowitz's mentor defends ethnic cleansing.
Responses
-
embracing, endorsing, and condoning
anti-Armenian remarks
- Vice President Wright's letter on the Itzkowitz matter.
- insensitivity to horrific human
suffering
- Governor Whitman's letter.
- Professor discusses past genocide
- The Daily Princetonian article.
Information on the scandal that exposed scholarly corruption
at Princeton on behalf of the Turkish government.