FROM LEBANON TO THE US, PROFESSOR KHACHIG TOLOLYAN REFLECTS ON 34 YEARS OF CHANGE
By Elana Metsch-Ampel
Wesleyan Argus
anon-to-the-us-professor-khachig-tololyan-refl-ect s-on-34-years-of-change/
March 4 2009
Professor Khachig Tololyan immigrated to the US with his entire family
from Beirut, Lebanon when he was 16 years old. A member of the Armenian
Diaspora, Tololyan is connected with communities throughout the world,
one of them being the community at Wesleyan, where Tololyan has worked
for 34 years since finishing graduate school in 1974. Tololyan’s tenure
at the University has given him a panoramic view of the University
and of the way it has changed over time.
The child of Armenian refugees from Turkey, Tololyan comes from a
history of persecution. His parents fled Turkey to northern Syria,
where Tololyan was born. He continued to move with his family,
first to Cairo, Egypt and then to Lebanon, Beirut, and finally to
Watertown, Massachusetts. Despite having lived and worked in the US
for the entirety of his adult life, Tololyan keeps in close contact
with the other scattered Armenian communities throughout the world. He
visits the Armenian community in Paris annually, for example, and has
connections with the intellectual and professorial class in Armenia,
along with some political ties.
Despite Tololyan’s strong connection to the Armenian Diaspora, he
has no desire to return to the Middle East.
"The Middle East I knew no longer exists," he explained. "There have
been so many problems, changes, wars, revolutions–that world changed
very fast. Frankly, I have no interest in going back."
Tololyan explains that places of his childhood like Beirut have
changed unrecognizably, and he does not feel optimistic about the
fate of the Middle East in the days to come.
"The Middle East is first of all not a place that can decide its own
fate," Tololyan said. "What happens in the Middle East is decided
as much in places like the United States as it is in the Middle East
itself. There are too many cooks, and too many cooks who are trying
to cook different dishes."
Tololyan’s experience throughout the Middle East and as a member of
the Armenian Diaspora has attracted him to the study of diasporas
in general, which his personal research and preoccupations
center around. Although he received his undergraduate degree in
molecular biology from Harvard, Tololyan’s focus is comparative
literature. Initially hired at Wesleyan through the English Department,
Tololyan three years ago transferred to the College of Letters,
where he teaches courses that are more specifically focused on his
area of training. He has taught subjects ranging from Homer and the
Old Testament to Virgil and the New Testament.
Over the years, he has also held visiting professorships at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and at the University of Johns
Hopkins. He has also taken sabbaticals at Brown University.
"My experience as a member of the Armenian Diaspora has prepared me
not just intellectually, but in a gut way to know what it’s like to
live in one place but to care about two places at once," Tololyan said.
Despite commonly held perceptions, Tololyan believes that in many
crucial ways, the University has stayed the same. He feels that
aspects in which the University has changed are largely due to
national trends manifested across the elite schools of the country
and are not necessarily specific to Wesleyan alone.
"I think Wesleyan still selectively attracts kids from certain parts of
the country with certain shared convictions about life, that hasn’t
changed very much," Tololyan said. "It’s true that there’s a little
more anxiety than there used to be, but that’s probably the case
across most of America."
He also addressed the University’s past reputations, noting that drug
use, for example, was no different here than at any other University.
"People think of Wesleyan as the drug capital of America or something,"
Tololyan said.
"I’d always find it very strange that the drug lure was heavy
here–are there no other campuses across the United States where
there are drugs?"
Tololyan did, however, mention two specific changes in the student
body that he’s noticed over time. First, he remembers a world before
laptops and cell phones from when he began teaching. Second, he
remembers the political climate on campus, and how it has changed.
"Wesleyan above all has had left wing politics of a serious sort,
of a really serious sort, and that’s largely disappeared."
As for the University’s students, Tololyan explained that over the
years, he has noticed that the excitement freshmen feel as they enter
their first year often mirrors the excitement and privilege they feel
as they leave the University their senior year. He also addressed,
however, the positive and negative qualities of student work ethic.
"[Students], in good and bad ways, tend to be less neurotically intense
about competition than their peers elsewhere," Tololyan said. "The
bad part of that is that characteristically Wesleyan students who are
clearly smart and able have the tendency to flake out when the work
gets difficult. Many of my good students have more ambition than a
willingness to work really hard."
He explained that from his own experience, the balance between work and
"partying" is often difficult to negotiate, even for Wesleyan students.
"I have many students who are smart and ambitious but who start
partying too hard on Thursdays. On the other hand, they don’t have
the neurotic, Nazi-like intensity you find in some places. What the
perfect balance is, that’s very hard to say. It’s not like there are
whole colleges where that can be determined, it’s up to an individual."
Tololyan also has specific opinions about the nature of the
University today. He tries to take advantage of what he considers
to be an expansive and unique art scene on campus. He explains that
the opportunities offered by the University in theater, photography,
the visual arts, music and creative writing are extremely valuable,
and urges students to take advantage of them.
"There are places like Oberlin, for example, where music is king,
but the richness and span of the arts in those places is not the same
as it is at Wesleyan," Tololyan said.
"There is more richness here than there is in many otherwise similar
undergraduate campuses."