Boston Globe, MA
Dec 5 2007
ADL’s regional leader resigns
Backers cite rift on genocide issue
By Megan Woolhouse
Globe Staff / December 5, 2007
Andrew H. Tarsy, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League
New England office, announced his resignation yesterday, the
culmination of a months-long dispute with the national organization
over its failure to fully acknowledge the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Tarsy informed the national office of his departure Friday and alerted
co-workers and friends yesterday. In a phone interview, he did not
elaborate on the reason for his departure, calling it "a professional
judgment based on knowing when it’s your time."
But supporters said it was clearly the result of his rift with the
ADL’s national director, Abraham H. Foxman, over the genocide issue.
"At the end of the day, the vision of the New England leadership and
Abe Foxman’s leadership were simply not fully compatible," said Steve
Grossman, a former member of the ADL New England board. Tarsy
"realized that he would have to make too many compromises that he was
not prepared to make. I think he leaves with his integrity intact,
with his head held high."
Tarsy’s announcement comes a little more than three months after he
won his job back, following a high-profile showdown with Foxman over
recognition of the Armenian genocide, in which more than 1 million
people died. In August, Tarsy broke ranks with the national ADL,
demanding that it acknowledge that genocide had occurred. Foxman
fired Tarsy and then rehired him two weeks later, after acknowledging
the massacres from 1915 to 1920 in the Ottoman-Turk empire were
"tantamount to genocide" – a rare reversal for the longtime leader.
In a letter to the New England board announcing his resignation,
Tarsy said he leaves with "sadness in my heart."
"I have always given my very best in order to advance the agency’s
important mission and I have decided that it is time for me to move
on," he wrote. "I am proud of what we have accomplished over the
nearly eight years since I came to the ADL, and in particular the two
and a half years I have been regional director."
Officials at the ADL’s national headquarters declined to comment
yesterday, except for issuing a one-sentence statement saying they
had accepted Tarsy’s resignation.
"I’m very sad and disappointed," said Nancy Kaufman, executive
director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
"I’m sorry that the position we all took in Boston collaboratively
wasn’t the position that won the day."
The controversy began in August when the Watertown Town Council –
under pressure from the town’s large Armenian population – voted to
sever its ties with the ADL’s No Place for Hate antidiscrimination
program, because of the organization’s failure to recognize the
genocide.
Human rights commissions in several other Massachusetts communities
have decided in recent months to follow Watertown’s lead.
Last night, selectmen in Needham voted, 4-0, with one member
abstaining, to suspend involvement in No Place for Hate, said Laura
Terzian, a resident who supported withdrawal.
"They’re not willing to change," she said of the ADL. "There should
be no equivocation."
After Foxman’s capitulation, the New England ADL asked for more
concessions from him, pressing the organization’s national leadership
to support at its annual meeting a congressional resolution
acknowledging the genocide. The proposal was debated for hours in a
closed-door meeting in New York by delegates from around the country,
but was ultimately withdrawn.
The organization issued a public statement saying it would "take no
further action on the issue of the Armenian genocide."
That decision disappointed many in the local Armenian community.
Sevag Arzoumanian, spokesman for a group called No Place for Denial,
which has led the campaign to get communities to drop the ADL No
Place for Hate program, said the ambiguity surrounding Tarsy’s
departure concerned him. He said Tarsy had been a hero among
Armenians for the way he stood up to national leaders on the genocide
issue. But he said more recently, Tarsy seemed to waver.
Tarsy and ADL New England board chairman Jim Rudolph wrote an
editorial that appeared in two local newspapers in September that
criticized the Armenian community’s efforts to get cities and towns
to sever ties with the ADL’s No Place for Hate antidiscrimination
program, he said.
"He had backtracked from his position," Arzoumanian said.
Rudolph responded by saying he and many others think Tarsy is an
"outstanding leader."
"He took a stand on a difficult issue which ultimately resulted in
the ADL locally and nationally recognizing the Armenian genocide,"
Rudolph said.
A search committee will convene soon to find Tarsy’s successor.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
