IAGS Blog

Article (Daniel Feierstein: On the Middle East Conflict (a viewpoint from the Far South)).

By Khatchig Mouradian

The Armenian Weekly

August 9, 2008

Amberin Zaman is the Turkey correspondent for the Economist. She has also covered the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabagh and Northern Iraq for many international publications including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. A citizen of Turkey, she divides her time between Turkey and Armenia.

In this interview, conducted by phone in late July, we talk about the recent developments in Turkey-Armenia relations.

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From the Armenian Reporter

.pdf

June 13, 2008
Contact: Roupen Kouyoumjian

TORONTO-The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), at a special meeting on June 12, unanimously approved the teaching of optional Genocide and Human Rights Curriculum to Grade 11 students. The curriculum includes the Armenian Genocide module, in addition to the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide.

The decision was the final step in the ratification of the curriculum which TDSB has been developing for the past three years. The vote followed the unanimous recommendation (June 2) of the Program and School Services Committee to adopt the curriculum.

Some 50 members of the Turkish community, carrying Turkish and Azeri flags, protested the inclusion of the Armenian module in the TDSB curriculum.

In the past six months the Council of Turkish Canadians and the Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations have mounted a well-orchestrated and relentless campaign of misinformation, innuendo, intimidation and dishonest tactics to pressure the TDSB to drop the Armenian Genocide as one of the three case studies in the curriculum.

The TDSB offered two hearings to Turkish representatives to air their concerns and register their objections. Furthermore, the TDSB created a special review committee of experts to review the curriculum and address the concerns of the Turkish and Ukrainian communities. The latter objected to the absence of the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) in the curriculum.

After careful examination of historical documentation, experts’ research, oral deputations of the stakeholders and their written arguments for and against the curriculum, the review committee, the TDSB staff and trustees reaffirmed that the Armenian massacres of 1915 were genocide and should be taught as such.

The Board said the Ukrainian Famine should be addressed by different means during the scholastic year, but not as a unit on its own. Trustee Mari Rutka recommended that a curriculum guide on the Holodomor should be developed for use in all high schools in 2009 and that there should be an annual recognition of the event.

The Genocide and Human Rights curriculum will be taught in Toronto high schools starting this September. Already, 12 schools have listed the curriculum as part of their next school year’s programs.

The media–print and electronic–provided extensive coverage to yesterday’s meeting and to the approval of the curriculum.

Dr. Girair Basmadjian, president of Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC), credited the vigilance and the leadership of ANCC and its “cooperation and co-ordination with the Zoryan Institute, and many other Armenian community organizations and churches,” for upholding the truth and for rendering justice to victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Aris Babikian, executive director, ANCC, said he was delighted to see “Turkish government’s and Turkish ultra-nationalists’ heavy-handed modus operandi did not succeed in undermining the credibility of our educational institutions. Once again, as in many other jurisdictions, the denialists’ bankrupt arguments and revisionist history failed to persuade the TDSB. The Board should be proud of its achievement and its pioneering work.”

http://www.anccanada.org/

Curriculum to cover Holocaust, Armenia and Rwanda
Natalie Alcoba, National Post Published: Friday, June 13, 2008

TORONTO - The Toronto public school board approved last night a controversial new highschool course about genocide, one of the first of its kind in Canada to explore the topic of mass killing around the world.

Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity will be an optional Grade 11 course in Toronto schools come September. It will focus on three case studies from the 20th and 21st centuries: the Holocaust, Armenia and Rwanda.
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Ethnic pressure

455 Words
Monday, May 19, 2008
Page A10
All material copyright CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.

The Toronto District School Board has set a dangerous precedent by yielding to demands from the Turkish-Canadian community that it withdraw a book about genocide from the recommended reading list of a new high school course.

The board’s capitulation over the inclusion of Barbara Coloroso’s Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide in a grade 11 history course called Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity creates the unsettling perception that individual ethnic groups can dictate the way we teach history in our public schools.

Other boards across Canada have already shown interest in replicating the new course, which magnifies the implications of blacklisting Ms. Coloroso’s work.

The complaints stretched well beyond the book to claims that more than a million Armenian deaths in the early 20th century should be excluded from genocide studies, echoing assertions by the Turkish state and some scholars that the victims were casualties of the First World War.

To the board’s credit, the course will still classify the massacres as a genocide while encouraging student awareness of conflicting opinions, a laudable stance given that the overwhelming mass of scholarship on the subject has approved the genocide label, as have Canada, 21 other countries and 41 U.S. states.

But its assertion that the book has been pulled because it is “not a good example of rigorous historical scholarship” raises questions about the board’s own rigour in choosing the text in the first place. If it is as historically shaky as now claimed, it should never have reached the list.

Board documents claim the book was chosen for its relevance to the course - both focus on the tragedies of Armenia, Rwanda and the Holocaust - and call Ms. Coloroso “a renowned educator.” Reviews of the book describe her as an accomplished lecturer and an expert in parenting and education, all of which casts doubt on claims that her writing is unsuitable for high school students.

The decision also promises to consider a lobbyist’s request to include texts by Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy. Some Armenian groups question the scholarly reputations of both writers for their public denials that the deaths constituted genocide.

The board softened its stance slightly by allowing that Ms. Coloroso’s text could be useful for a segment of the course, on the social psychology of genocide, because of its thesis that describes genocide as akin to schoolyard bullying, another subject she has studied extensively.

Last week Ms. Coloroso said she is frustrated that the board had been bullied by a small group. She of all people seems unlikely to use the term “bully” lightly, and her lament is sure to resonate with those who treat history as a controversial field that invites debate.

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Genocide book pulled from high school reading list

UNNATI GANDHI
From Friday’s Globe and Mail
May 16, 2008

A book about genocide has been pulled from the recommended reading list of a new Toronto public school course because of objections from the Turkish-Canadian community, the author says.

Barbara Coloroso’s Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide was originally part of a resource list for the Grade 11 history course, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, set to launch across the Toronto District School Board this fall.

The book examines the Holocaust, which exterminated six million Jews in the Second World War; the Rwandan slaughter of nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, and the massacres of more than a million Armenians in 1895, 1909 and 1915.

But a committee struck to review the course decided in late April to remove the book because “a concern was raised regarding [its] appropriateness. … The Committee determined this was far from a scrupulous text and should not be on a History course although it might be included in a course on the social psychology of genocide because of her posited thesis that genocide is merely the extreme extension of bullying,” according to board documents.

Director of education Gerry Connelly did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

Ms. Coloroso, a best-selling author of parenting books, said she wasn’t surprised her work was removed, given that “ever since the book came out, the Turks have mounted a worldwide campaign objecting to it, which is not surprising because of the denial of the genocide.”

She said what upset her was not so much that her book had been pulled, but that it was replaced by works by Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy, whom she refers to as deniers of the Armenian genocide.

“I knew when I wrote Extraordinary Evil that I would anger some genocide deniers,” she wrote to Ms. Connelly. “I am disappointed that a small group of people can bully an entire committee. …”

The Council of Turkish Canadians is opposed to the course for classifying the Armenian killings as genocide and inciting anti-Turkish sentiment. It has gathered nearly 11,000 signatures on an online petition calling for changes to the course. Turkey has denied the killings were genocide, saying they were First World War casualties.

Kevser Taymaz, president of the council’s board, said yesterday the book’s removal was “one positive move” by the school board, but added the Armenian massacres should not even be considered as part of course that is entitled “Genocide.”

“The course is one-sided. If they want to introduce the events of 1915, it should be giving the historical truth from both sides and let the students decide.”

Aris Babikian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, said Armenian-Canadians feel the course as it stands is headed “in the right direction.”

“But we have some concerns about … the inclusion of Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy as reputable scholars. It will be unjust to the hundreds of scholars who have researched the Armenian genocide.”

My name is Ioannis Fidanakis, President of Panthracian Union of America ‘Orpheus’. I have recently written an article dealing with the Greek Genocide, but focusing on its events inside Eastern Thrace. A region in which the Genocide took place, yet is overlooked by many. This article entitled, “Turkish Denial and The Forgotten Genocides” was recently published by Global Politician.com. With your Association’s most recent recognition of the Greek Genocide, I thought perhaps you maybe interested in my article.

Respectfully,
Ioannis Fidanakis
President of Panthracian Union of America “Orpheus”

Published in the April issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention, Journal of IAGS.

download in PDF

The recent debate on Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) decision to develop a Grade 11 ‘Genocide: Historical and Contemporary Implications’ curriculum, which has been approved by the Minister of Education in Ontario, unleashed a sophisticated and deceptive campaign to discredit the curriculum and the TDSB. Any rational, responsible person would applaud the teaching of our…(read more)