TURKISH SCHOLAR OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TANER AKCAM SPEAKS APRIL 18

UST Bulletin Today, MN
April 12 2007

The Genocide Intervention Network-Minnesota will host a talk by Dr.
Taner Akcam, visiting professor of history at the University of
Minnesota and a scholar of the Armenian genocide. Akcam’s talk,
free and open to the public, begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 18,
in Room 100, McNeely Hall.

In 1976, Akcam was arrested and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment
as the editor-in-chief of a political journal. He escaped from
prison a year later, tunneling his way to freedom, and became one of
Amnesty International’s first "prisoners of conscience." He lived in
Germany since 1978 as a political refugee and continued his political
activities, studying at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and
the University of Hannover in Germany on the topic of the Armenian
genocide.

Dr. Taner Akcam Akcam is under investigation in Turkey for asserting
that the deportations and deaths of nearly a million Armenians in
1915 constituted a genocide, which is denied by the government.

Speaking out against the Turkish government’s policy constitutes the
crime of "insulting Turkishness," for which Nobel laureate Ohran Pamuk,
novelist and professor Elif Shafak of the University of Arizona,
and Istanbul Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, recently murdered for
speaking out about the genocide, also have been targeted.

Akcam is the first Turkish specialist to use the word "genocide"
publicly in this context. The New York Times calls his new book,
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish
Responsibility, an "impressive achievement … [it] shines light
on exactly why and how the Ottoman Empire deported and slaughtered
the Armenians."

Akcam’s visit is sponsored by the All College Council, University
Lectures Committee, History Department, and the Ohanessian Endowment
Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation.

For additional information on the Genocide Intervention Network,
contact:

Jenny Le, president, St. Thomas chapter of the Genocide Intervention
Network Dr. Ellen Kennedy, Genocide Intervention Network-Minnesota
Minnesota Genocide Intervention Network Web site Genocide Intervention
Network Web site, the national organization.

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