Earlier this year, I invited Professor Taner Akçam to speak
to students and faculty at the University of Illinois about the Armenian
Genocide and the Turkish state’s denial of that genocide. Professor Akçam, the
Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Professor of
Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies at Clark University, is one of the world’s leading genocide scholars
and one of the first Turkish intellectuals to acknowledge and openly discuss
the Armenian Genocide. Last week he
informed me that he is cancelling his visit to Illinois to honor the boycott
that has arisen in the wake of the university’s decision to revoke a job offer
to Dr. Steven Salaita because of comments Dr. Salaita made on twitter about the
recent bombing of Gaza.
As Professor Akçam makes clear in the statement below,
his personal experience with censorship, imprisonment, harassment, and violence
makes it impossible for him to visit our campus until a just resolution to the
Salaita case is found. While I deeply regret that our students and faculty will
not have the opportunity to meet and hear from Professor Akçam this fall, I
understand and respect his decision. His own story demonstrates all too clearly
what happens when those in power attempt to cut off debate about matters of
public concern, including controversial political conflicts. The recent
controversy on our own campus concerns the hot-button issue of
Israel-Palestine, but Professor Akçam’s experience illustrates the all too real
risks to academic freedom and freedom of speech that can emerge in any field of
research once political expression is limited.
--Michael Rothberg, Director of the Initiative in
Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Illinois
I personally know the value of freedom of expression and
I have paid a heavy price for it in my life. I was thrown in prison in 1976
simply because Turkish authorities did not like what I wrote and said about
democratic rights and the rights of Kurdish people. The government, the
judicial system and law enforcement authorities held tremendous power in
Turkey, while I was a mere citizen, a young student at the time; next to them,
I was a nobody and freedom of expression was just some words written on paper.
Later, I became the target of a hate campaign here in the
US organized by extreme nationalists from Turkey because they did not like my
scholarly work on the Armenian Genocide. I was not only threatened with death
but I was also physically assaulted in New York in 2006 and had to be protected
by campus police. I was detained at the Canadian border in February 2007
because those who did not like what I had to say on the Armenian genocide
vandalized my Wikipedia web-page and portrayed me as an “enemy of Turkey and a
terrorist.” Letters have been sent to universities to cancel my lectures when I
have been invited to speak and in some of those cases university officials were
intimidated.
I was also on the hit-list of a covert organization in
Turkey known as “Ergenekon” which consists of some members of both the armed
forces and civil bureaucrats. These circles arranged the assassination of my
dear friend, the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, in Istanbul in January 2007
because they did not like what he said and wrote.
So, I know the value of freedom of speech and the weight
of it resides deep inside my flesh and bones.
It is indeed very sad for me to experience practices here
in American universities where certain power centers can hold sway over an
individual’s right to express their opinion. This is doubly saddening to me
because when I was the target of attacks it was American universities that came
to my defense and who always had my back. They ignored the threats and
intimidation and were stalwart defenders of freedom of speech. America is indeed
that safe haven for so many of us who have escaped persecution in our home
countries.
For that reason, perhaps out of gratitude, we are willing
to give the benefit of the doubt when we see injustices played out here,
believing that the US has a just system of governance and law and, even more
importantly, a strong democratic moral center.
But when you learn that someone can lose a job opportunity simply
because of something they expressed about a political issue, you suddenly feel
quite naked, as if a warm cozy blanket had been pulled off you. Naked, because
you realize that the “powers that be” reside here too and you are just as
vulnerable as you were before when “they” could decide they don’t like what you
have to say and make your life hell because of it.
The job offer to Professor Steven Salaita was withdrawn
based solely on his strongly worded expressions via Twitter on Gaza and
Palestine. Whether or not Professor Salaita’s utterances were appropriate is
not the point here! Let’s even accept that they are inappropriate! This has
nothing to do with my argument. His statements may have disturbed a university
president, someone with a sensitive temperament, but then that president might
be equally disturbed by the violence of bombs falling on innocent children and
the utterances of the cheerful supporters of those bombs.
Persecution, intimidation, harassment and abuse of power
against those whose thoughts and views do not suit the “powers that be” is
nothing new. This has been a problem since the origins of humanity. We should
never let power be abused in this reckless way. The boundaries of freedom of
speech cannot be determined arbitrarily, but must be determined by the rule of
law, which is the product of the fight of humanity against any kind of ideology
and practice based on discrimination, hate and racism!
I am canceling my lecture at the University of Illinois
to show my solidarity with Professor Steven Salaita and to protest the decision
of the Chancellor, the President, and the Board of Trustees of the University.
1 Comment
Ahmet Aykac10/06/2014 10:47am
I concur 100% with my compatriot Prof. Akcam. For those
of us who hold freedom of speech to be sacrosanct, the Bill of Rights and its
application through the years by the Supreme Court have always been an
inspiration and model to follow. Even when grave attempts were made on First
Amendment protection, courageous people voiced their concern and the legal
system ultimately corrected the infringements.
Prof. Akcam's reaction is one such statement of concern
on yet another blow to the freedom of thought and speech. I hope it will ultimately
have the effect of correcting an injustice.
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