THE GENOCIDE DEBATE
Toronto Star
May 21 2008
Canada
The decision to remove a book from the reading list of a new
high-school course on genocide smacks of bowing to pressure from a
well-organized community.
A committee of Toronto public school board staff and university
academics recommended removing Barbara Coloroso’s book, Extraordinary
Evil: A Brief History of Genocide, from the Grade 11 course after
the board received complaints from seven Turkish Canadian groups and
a 1,200-name petition. Coloroso’s examples of genocide include the
killing of 1 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915.
The review committee concluded that Coloroso’s book was "not a good
example of rigorous historical scholarship." But the complaints the
board received went far beyond the scholarly merits of the book and
into Turkey’s view that what happened in 1915 wasn’t a genocide at all,
even though Canada and other countries have labelled it as such.
To its credit, the review committee did not back off including the
Armenian genocide in the course content, although it noted that
students should be made aware of conflicting opinions.
The review committee’s decision to delist Coloroso’s book has been
appealed to a panel of trustees, who could recommend reopening
this issue to allow the full school board to vote on it. In the
circumstances, that seems appropriate.