Boston Globe, MA
April 20 2006
Armenians get allies in genocide teachings
Group stands up ‘against denial’
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | April 20, 2006
Leading politicians and groups from a range of communities are
joining with Armenians in their battle to ensure that the Armenians’
early-20th-century history be taught as genocide.
The Armenians are fighting a federal lawsuit that seeks to include
opposing views of the genocide in teaching materials for
Massachusetts high schools.
A new group, called kNOw Genocide, includes the Jewish Community
Relations Council, the Irish Immigration Center, the Massachusetts
Council of Churches, Rwanda Outlook, and the Cambodian Mutual
Assistance Association, among others. Standing with them will be
Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey
— both gubernatorial candidates — and several state legislators.
A rally tomorrow at the State House is expected to draw
representatives from the diverse coalition, in a testament to the
political clout that the Armenian community has in Massachusetts.
”This allows our community, together with other communities, to
stand together against denial,” said Anthony Barsamian, a member of
the Armenian Assembly of America board, based in Washington. ”And
those who try to deny genocide will be beaten back.”
The coalition is being launched at a time of considerable debate over
events in Ottoman Turkey early last century. Several PBS stations
were criticized this week for airing a documentary called ”The
Armenian Genocide” and declining to air an accompanying panel
discussion that included scholars who have denied that a genocide
took place.
Those who believe that both views should be heard accused PBS
stations, including Boston’s WGBH, of bowing to pressure from
Armenians and their supporters.
Armenians and many historians have long maintained that the events of
1915 in Ottoman Turkey — in which more than 1 million Armenians were
killed and many more were driven from their homes — constituted
genocide.
In Massachusetts, home to about 30,000 Armenians, legislators
established a day of remembrance for victims.
But the Turkish government, and some historians, say what happened
should not be described as genocide because the deaths were part of a
civil war that resulted in the murder of innocent people on both
sides.
In the lawsuit, now pending at US District Court in Boston, a teacher
and a student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, and the
Assembly of Turkish American Associations, have demanded that the
state Department of Education include dissenting views on the
Armenian genocide in a curriculum guide on the topic.
A draft of that guide originally included the dissenting views, but
did not mandate that they be taught in Massachusetts schools. The
plaintiffs say the removal violates freedom of speech.
The attorney general, who is defending the state, argues that because
the curriculum guide is a government document, it is not bound by
free speech. Armenians and supporters say presenting opposing views
of the 1915 events is like denying the Holocaust.
The struggle has drawn support from other groups who say they speak
from their own painful histories of oppression.
”As members of the Jewish community, we identify with the Armenian
community in terms of the Armenian genocide, and it’s important to
fight denial,” said Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish
Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. ”We thought this was
a battle that had been won long ago.”
Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the
Department of Education suit, said his clients are not denying that a
genocide took place. ”We are not admitting it, we’re not denying it,
we’re taking no position,” he said. ”We simply want to open up the
avenues for honest debate and restore the censored articles to the
Massachusetts curriculum.”