Barsam crusades against genocide in Armenia, worldwide
By Jessica McConnell, Contributing Writer

Tufts Daily, MA

Published April 06, 2005

Onward and Upward

Tufts alum Shushan Barsam (J ’62, G ’89, A ’91P, A ’94P) has never
been able to ignore the mass killings of the Armenian people at the
beginning of the 20th century.

“I am Armenian by ethnicity, so I’ve grown up with stories of the
genocide,” Barshan said. “My parents are both survivors of genocide
and the death marches, so I grew up with stories of my parents’
experiences, and also with the political issue that the United States
had never acknowledged that genocide had taken place, and the country
of Turkey has refused to acknowledge that genocide had taken place,
and here I had living proof in both my parents.”

Since graduating from Tufts in 1962, Barsam, an instructor of French
language and literature at Northeastern University, has been working
to educate and inform the public about genocides around the globe,
with special emphasis on Armenia.

She founded the National Center for Genocide Studies with an eye to
create curricula that would be used in secondary schools “to teach
children that part of history that is ordinarily left out,” she said.

Barsam has also been helping to uncover and document further evidence
of the Armenian genocide in other ways. “I have always been a great
believer in education and information,” she said. “I felt that the
best way to address lack of recognition was to work on an institution
that would document and record it.”

With this reasoning, she became the founding director of the Zoryan
Institute, which collects information and conducts research on the
Armenian genocide. Since then, she has been working to document
facts that will force the recognition of past genocides and generate
attention to stop the mass killings that are taking place today.

Currently, Barsam feels that the largest problem facing the field
of genocide studies is not merely logistical or operational, but
systemic. “I’d say it’s a political issue that is exacerbated by the
fact that the United States has had a policy since the beginning of
the 20th century of not recognizing genocide, mass killings or mass
murders unless it is politically expedient,” Barsam said.

“It’s not that people don’t see innocent victims dying in Darfur,
or that they didn’t know about Germany, or Armenia – it was fully
reported in the New York Times – the problem is that there is no
political will to acknowledge these situations,” Barsam added.

In addition to fighting for recognition of the genocide that took
place in Armenia in the early 1900s, Barsam has been working to build
up the infrastructure of the growing republic there today.

A day after returning from her most recent trip to Armenia, Barsam
was positive and hardly seemed jet-lagged. “It was a successful trip,”
she said of the 10-day trek, which included meetings with the director
of the State University and several members of the Foreign Ministry
in order to determine how best to continue helping the state to train
a strong base of civil servants for the country’s future.

Barsam is certainly no stranger to this process – she has spent the
past 14 years (since Armenia first gained its independence) looking
for the best way to help the new republic become successful. By the
early 1990s, she was already focused on building the institutions in
the state by training diplomats.

“I decided my efforts should be directed toward helping the fledgling
republic of Armenia to improve its foreign ministry – which did not
exist under the Soviet Union,” Barsam said. She began some educational
programming within the Fletcher School for young diplomats in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia.

“We created certificate training programs, inviting Armenia’s best and
brightest to the Fletcher School, to create a cadre of Western-educated
and exposed young diplomats to serve the Republic of Armenia,” said
Barsam, highlighting the most recent program, an effort to improve
the level of efficiency and knowledge of the Central Bank of Armenia.

The training programs seem to be working. “Actually, the American
ambassador to Armenia was just visiting Boston in February to meet
with the Dean of the Fletcher School because he’s been so impressed
with the graduates,” Barsam said. “He says it’s been so easy to work
with them because they understand his way of thinking and they’re
more open to change – they’re more likely to be the people who are
going to be the future leaders of the country.”

Throughout her career, Barsam has remained intimately involved with
Tufts through positions on the Tufts Board of Trustees, the Tufts
Alumni Council and the Tufts Alumni Admissions Program – and of course,
through her training program in the Fletcher School. On April 30, she
will be rewarded by the Tufts Alumni Association with a Distinguished
Service Award (the association’s highest honor).

Balsam cites Seymour Sinches, a Tufts French professor who passed
away two years ago, as one of the most influential people she met as
an undergraduate at Tufts. “I majored in French, and he encouraged me
to pursue graduate education,” Barsam said. “He was the advisor for
my doctorate, he taught my children and was like a mentor to each of
them – inspirational, a humanist, a great teacher, a great lover of
learning – and I guess I’d say he was the catalyst for all our family
having such strong connection with Tufts.”

In the future, Barsam – a recent grandmother of two – predicts that
she will be taking some time to be with her family. “I think I will
be spending a lot of time with my grandchildren,” she said.

She also indicated a desire to sustain the relationship between the
Fletcher School and the Armenian government. “I hope to continue my
involvement with the Republic of Armenia and have an impact upon its
educational system and the training of its young leaders,” Barsam said.

“I hope I can always be a bridge between Armenia and Tufts and the
Fletcher School so we can find ways to bring what Armenia has to
offer here and what Tufts has to offer there – to continue to find
ways to involve both in each others’ destiny,” she said.