RELUCTANTLY THRUST INTO SPOTLIGHT, ARMENIA SCHOLAR BECOMES EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENDER
Gabriel Sanders

Forward, NY

Oct 10 2007

Last week, while on his way to visit a friend in Watertown, Mass. –
the Boston suburb that served as ground zero in last summer’s showdown
between Armenian groups and the Anti-Defamation League over recognition
of the Armenian Genocide – James Russell, a professor of Armenian
studies at Harvard University, stopped at Arax, a popular Middle
Eastern market.

As he gathered his groceries, he heard a fellow shopper, an Armenian,
somewhat menacingly say, "Have a look at Mr. Russell over there." The
professor, taken aback, asked, "Have I had the honor?" The two had
never met before, but Russell’s reputation as a perennial thorn in
the Armenian community’s side preceded him.

A complex figure, the 53-year-old Russell resists easy classification
and is no stranger to controversy: reviled by Turks and Armenians
alike, a Jew and staunch Zionist working in a field that is often
hostile to Israel, and a gay man and self-described red-diaper
baby who has served as a faculty adviser to a conservative Harvard
student newspaper. And yet, while he is for some a polarizing figure,
his variousness has also allowed him to serve as something else –
a bridge builder.

Russell’s grocery store interlocutor, who it turned out was
a doctor and prominent member of the local Armenian community,
wanted to know if Russell was for or against the ADL’s involvement
in Watertown. The town made headlines last summer when it voted to
withdraw from an anti-bigotry program run by the ADL to protest the
group’s long-standing refusal to refer to World War I-era massacres
of Armenians as genocide. In August, the ADL, under pressure from
its New England chapter, reversed its position but stopped short of
endorsing a resolution recognizing the genocide now before Congress.

Russell answered that he was satisfied with the group’s new stance.

Should they lobby against the resolution, he will oppose them, he said,
but should they take a neutral view, he will not be opposed.

The doctor was incredulous, and asked Russell how a Jewish group
could justify such a stance.

"And what are Armenians doing to help Jewish causes?" Russell
countered. "How is it that nobody faults Armenia for being friendly
with Syria and Iran?"

A New York native, Russell’s interest in Armenia began during a trip
he took to the Soviet Union as a high school student in 1969. Upon
his return, he began studying Armenian with tutors he found in upper
Manhattan. He then intensified his study of the language at Columbia
University, where he was the first undergraduate ever to major in
Armenian studies. After completing a graduate degree at Oxford, Russell
ultimately earned his Ph.D. from the University of London, where he
wrote a dissertation on Zoroastrianism in Armenia. Russell spent the
first years of his career back at Columbia’s department of Middle East
studies, which denied him tenure in 1992. (Russell maintains that the
decision was rooted in antisemitism.) He then moved to Israel, where
he taught at Hebrew University. Shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem,
however, he learned that he had been appointed to the chair in Armenian
studies at Harvard, which has served as his academic home since 1993.

In conversations with the Forward, Russell emphasized that he is a
scholar of Armenian language and literature and not a historian of the
genocide, discussions of which, he noted with some dismay, often come
to eclipse his true areas of specialty. "Sometimes it reminds me of how
American Jews don’t bother to learn about Hebrew, but they know about
the Holocaust," he said. As a prominent Armenologist, however, Russell
has felt it his duty to decry Turkish genocide denial, a stance for
which he has been attacked both in the Turkish press and on the Web.

Russell’s insistence on the truth of the Armenian genocide has not,
however, served to endear him to the American Armenian community,
at least not when coupled with criticism of Armenians. A threatening
and almost cartoonishly antisemitic 2002 opinion piece in the New
York-based Armenian Reporter newspaper essentially instructed Russell
to keep quiet.

"Regardless of his professional qualifications," it said, "[Russell]
should not forget his conditional position within the Armenian
community. Mr. Russell’s professional services regarding Armenian
studies do not in any way give him the liberty to attack any Armenian
organization or individual. On the contrary, Mr. Russell’s position
as an Armenian studies chairman requires his conformity with and
subservience to the greater Armenian community, regardless of its
political affiliations."

In a sense, Russell and his critics are in agreement when it comes to
the matter of where his allegiances lie. "My primary loyalty is to
my own people," he said. But, for Russell, solidarity is not simply
a synonym for clannishness. It also demands responsibility.

"When people fight for their rights and acquire power, they also
acquire a sense of their own responsibility and integrity, wholeness.

This is what gay liberation has done for gays. As Jews, since we are
not powerless anymore, since we have a state, we don’t have to be the
lambs of the sacrifice, the conscience of the world, the people held
to a higher standard."

Ultimately, Russell said, his hope is that Armenians can feel similarly
empowered.

"In discussing the genocide with Armenians, I don’t want to appeal
to a sense of victimhood," he said. "I want to say, ‘You too have a
state. It too has interests. In the long run, Armenia and Israel can
be friends.’"

In the interim, Russell contents himself with dialogue. Even when
receiving hate mail, he tries to engage.

"I’ve gotten some threatening letters from Turks by email," he said.

"I always answer. If they call me a name, I call them a name. Then
they usually write back saying, ‘Professors shouldn’t use such
language.’ And then I say, ‘I thought that’s the language you used,
but if you want to speak human language here’s my home address,
why don’t you come have dinner.’ Then they write back and say,
‘I’ll bring the baklava.’"

And in small yet tangible ways, Russell’s approach is working. After
his initially tense run in at the Watertown market, the doctor offered
to pay for some of Russell’s groceries. This week, he came to sit in
on one of Russell’s classes. The discussion went on for four and a
half hours.