PRINCETON BOROUGH -- The Turkish government's partial funding of a chair for Turkish studies at Princeton University has fueled a petition signed by many of the best-known figures on the American literary scene, suggesting that Princeton has sanctioned "false scholarship."
University officials call the allegations "preposterous" and say Princeton's reputation and hiring practices have become enmeshed in a long-running, emotionally charged debate over the definition of genocide and the deaths of as many as 1 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I.
The man at the center of the controversy is Heath W. Lowry, the head of the university's Near Eastern Studies Department, who in 1993 was named to Princeton's Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies after 12 years heading a Washington institute endowed by the Turkish government.
While Lowry headed the Institute for Turkish Studies, the group encouraged Turkey to provide a $750,000 matching grant to fund the position at Princeton for which Lowry would later be hired. An equal amount was raised privately by the university.
Critics in the academic community say Lowry's appointment is part of a calculated attempt to gain academic respectability for efforts at revisionist history by the Turkish government, which is also endowing chairs at Harvard, Georgetown and the University of Chicago.
Princeton officials and faculty members bristle at the allegations that Turkey exerted influence in Lowry's hiring, say donors are given no input in a carefully controlled procedure for hiring chairs, and they praise Lowry for his scholarship and teaching ability.
"These people have absolutely not one shred of evidence," said University spokesperson Jacquelyn Savani. "It's all supposition. They're making an allegation with no evidence."
"We have a policy -- no strings attached to gifts," Savani added. "This is not the amount of money, given the $4 billion endowment of Princeton University, that should even raise the suspicions. The fact of the matter is that not for $100 million could the Turkish government put their man in that chair. Not with this faculty."
Fueling Lowry's critics are his past ties to the Turkish government and criticism of scholarship on the genocide of Armenians, particularly a 1990 incident in which he ghost-wrote a letter for the Turkish ambassador that criticized a respected American historian.
"The obvious question is this: What are the standards for a chair at Princeton?" said Roger W. Smith, a professor at the College of William & Mary. "It seems to me Princeton really has to address that.
"I think the appearances are something that both Lowry and Princeton should clear up," Smith continued, "What I'd like to see Princeton do is establish a faculty committee to investigate the way the appointment was made and submit their recommendations to the university."
The petition, circulated among the academic and literary community, prominently mentions Lowry's chair at Princeton as part of a larger focus on Turkish denials that Armenian deaths in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide.
The prevailing view among most historians is that more than 1 million Armenians were massacred in a deliberate extermination program by the Ottoman Turks. The Turkish government and a smaller group of academics, including Lowry, maintain that the Armenians perished in a messy civil war.
Lowry does not deny that huge numbers of Armenians died during that period, but says he "cannot accept the characterization of this tragedy as a pre-planned, state-perpetrated genocide," he said in a statement.
The petition, titled "Taking A Stand Against The Turkish Government's Denial of the Armenian Genocide," was prepared and circulated by Colgate University professor Peter Balakian, and its 57 signees include authors Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, and Susan Sontag, playwrights Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter, and poets Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg and Seamus Heaney. "We condemn false scholarship funded by the Turkish government and carried out in American universities," the petition reads. "We denounce Turkey's manipulation of American universities and other institutions for the purpose of Armenian Genocide Denial, as intellectually and morally corrupt. We urge America's institutions and citizens to reject Turkey's blackmail."
Princeton, however, rejects the petition's assumption that Turkey's funding of the chair influenced Lowry's selection.
"Heath Lowry was hired following the University's established procedures," said Amy Gutman, Princeton's Dean of the Faculty. "A University-wide committee of elected faculty members oversees this process, and advises the President on each appointment. The University does not permit donors of chairs to influence the outcome of its appointment processes."
A member of the search committee, history professor John Ralph Willis, defended both the hiring process and Lowry.
"I can say categorically that the search committee at no time received any such pressure, and that Professor Lowry was selected among many distinguished applicants because of his scholarship and integrity," said Willis.
As many as 50 candidates were considered, with a handful of finalists visiting the campus and giving lectures. The finalists were then reviewed by the university's Committee on Appointments and Advancements, a six-member faculty board elected by senior tenured professors at Princeton, which made the final recommendation to hire Lowry.
"These were very public events," said Savani. "It isn't even in the hands of any one person. Who would the Turkish government manipulate?"
"The Turkish government certainly imposed no stipulations on who could hold the Ataturk Chair at Princeton, nor have we done so in the cases of Georgetown and Harvard University or the University of Chicago," Rafet Akgunay, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, wrote in a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"It is quite remarkable even to suggest that four of America's most well-respected, prestigious and wealthy universities could be so manipulated," Akgunay added.
Lowry's critics, including genocide scholars and Armenian advocates, cite no specific evidence of impropriety in Princeton's hiring of Lowry, but say the "appearances," are unsettling. They also challenge Lowry's academic credentials for the post.
"Here's a person who's never had a full-time teaching position at an American university," said Smith of William & Mary. "If he had a great scholarly record, I would swallow hard and accept it."
"We think (Lowry's credentials) are top-notch," countered Princeton's Savani. "We hired him. The university thought sufficiently well of him that he was made department chair" a year after his hiring, she noted.
In addition to his work at the Institute for Turkish Studies, Lowry has been a visiting professor at George Washington University and an adjunct professor at Georgetown, was a research associate at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Center in Washington, and spent eight years teaching at two universities in Istanbul.
Balakian and Smith claim Lowry has written only three books, just one of which was published in the University States. Lowry's curriculum vitae lists eight published books and two more awaiting publication, as well as 22 articles for periodicals.
"These charges have no basis in fact and will appear vacuous to anyone who is familiar with either the substance and tenor of Professor Lowry's scholarship," stated a joint letter from the 11 members of the Near Eastern Studies Department to The Daily Princetonian.
Lowry teaches undergraduate classes in Ottoman history and 20th century Turkish politics. Near Eastern Studies students and members of the Turkish Society of Princeton have voiced their support for Lowry and praised his teaching as "dynamic and exciting" in letters to the student newspaper.
Willis disputed the notion should not accept donations from foreign countries as a way to avoid controversy about endowments.
"Human rights violations exist in all countries, including our own, and if the university would apply this criterion to its policies of accepting donations for scholarly purposes, it would have to reject all offers from sovereign governments," said Willis.
Amid all the claims and counter-claims, one thing is clear: Lowry's differences with other scholars over the Armenian genocide are a long-standing point of contention that has inflamed the debate over his appointment at Princeton.
In a recent statement, Lowry clarified his position on the issue, which he says has been distorted by others.
"Neither I nor any scholar specializing in Ottoman history would deny or condone the widespread death, destruction and decimation affecting a large portion of the Armenian Ottoman citizenry which occurred in the course of the First World War," Lowry said. "All of us are deeply appalled by the suffering and loss of life that took place
"I and many others in the field cannot accept the characterization of this human tragedy as a preplanned, state-perpetrated genocide--as distinct from the kind of tragic ethnic cleansing, intercommunal strife and massacres currently being witnessed in the Balkans--unless and until the historical records of the Ottoman state are studied and evaluated by competent scholars.
"This in no way implies an insensitivity on my part to the survivors and their descendants of the Armenian tragedy," Lowry added. "It does, however, mean that as a scholar whose research focuses on the role of non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire, I am cognizant of the need for dispassionate scholarship in attempting to come to terms with events surrounding the collapse of the 600-year Ottoman polity."
Lowry did not return repeated calls seeking further comment.
Lowry's perspective is not unique. Princeton's history department includes two other scholars, Bernard Lewis and Norman Itzkowitz, who have expressed similar views.
Lewis last year created a controversy in France with an interview in Le Monde in which he said that "if one speaks of (Armenian) genocide ... that is strongly in doubt." Itzkowitz has written that Armenian sufferings "have to be seen against the backdrop of their own atrocities committed against the Turks" and cited Turkish sources and literature as presenting the most reliable accounts of events.
"What they've done by giving (Lowry) a chair is to legitimize the official position of the Turkish government at a major American university," said Adalian. "The whole point of his effort is to create controversy where there should be none. The evidence on the Armenian genocide is overwhelming."
Savani said the University "just doesn't take a stand on this at all," and noted that scholars hold different views on how to characterize the Armenian deaths in 1915-23.
Among the chief ammunition for Lowry's critics is an article in the scholarly journal Holocaust & Genocide Studies earlier this year documenting Lowry's work with the Turkish embassy in evaluating scholarly writings mentioning the Armenian genocide.
In 1990, Lowry helped the Turkish ambassador to the U.S. prepare a letter rebuking renowned City University of New Your genocide scholar Robert Jay Lifton for treating the genocide of Armenians as a fact in his book "The Nazi Doctors." When mailing the letter to Lifton, the embassy inadvertantly included earlier correspondence between Lowry and Turkish ambassador Husmet Kandemir.
In a Sept. 26, 1990, memo to Kandemir, Lowry writes that he had read Lifton's book "per your request...with an eye to drafting a letter for your signature to the author." Lowry also refers to contacts with other Turkish officials on the subject, writing that one point he makes "has been repeatedly stressed both in writing and verbally to Ankara."
"On the chance that you still wish to respond in writing to Lifton," the memo concludes, "I have drafted the following letter." The draft states that Kandemir was "shocked" by Lifton's "simply ludicrous" references to the "so-called Armenian genocide." The letter closes by recommending Lifton read the works of "American experts on the history of Turco-Armenian relations" -- including Lowry.
A virtually identical letter bearing Kandemir's signature was sent to Lifton, dated Oct. 2, 1990.
"Not only is it unbelievable, but it's so public because of the mistake that happened," said Colgate's Balakian. "It was the wrong man to send it to, because Robert Jay Lifton is one of the most respected academics and moral thinkers there is.
"When I saw the paper, I said `we've got to go public,'" said Balakian. "My petition started with Arthur Miller and Susan Sontag. They were all greatly impassioned in support of it."
Critics say Lowry has also generated controversy with his challenge of a quote widely attributed to Adolf Hitler linking the Armenian deaths with the later Nazi Holocaust. The quote, from an Aug. 22, 1939 discussion between Hitler and his military advisors -- "Who, after all, remembers the Armenians?" -- is viewed as important in Hitler's rationalization of the Holocaust.
In a 1985 article in Political Communication and Persuasion, Lowry argued that "there is no historical basis for attributing such a statement to Hitler" and calls it a "purported Adolf Hitler quote."
The Hitler statement is now inscribed on one of the walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and the Armenian Assembly insists the quote has been fully authenticated.
Meanwhile, the Armenian community has aggressively courted media coverage of the petition drive, providing voluminous documents about Lowry's background, the Institute on Turkish Studies, and writings on the subject by Lowry and others.
Balakian's star-studded petition has gained visibility for grievances about the denial of the Armenian genocide. He hopes it will also prompt Princeton to "be more open to acknowledging what's there rather than trying to defend the situation. That's part of what we're hoping to accomplish.
Princeton's Savani says there's nothing there to begin with, and that there has been widespread "misinformation" about Princeton's hiring of Lowry.
Nevertheless, Savani acknowledges that the controversy has been difficult for all involved because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter.
"It does seem to me that this whole issue is another chapter in a long-term anguish about the meaning of this event, for both Armenians and Turks," said Savani.