Armenian

The case for an Armenian genocide memorial on the Greenway

adamg — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:55:16 +0000

Jen Langley doesn't get why Tom Menino is so opposed to the idea of an Armenian genocide memorial atop the Big Dig:

... There's the Holocaust Memorial and several Irish Potato Famine memorials. There's a Hungarian Revolution Monument. There's an African American History Museum and statues of Leif Eriksson.

Menino helped put a memorial to Sacco and Venzetti in the Boston Public Library!

I truly believe he just doesn't want a big deal about the Armenian Genocide going on in Boston, in a country where our president hasn't honored his pledge to recognize the Genocide. ...

Genocide or civil war?

adamg — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:33:45 +0000

Dan thinks Harvey Silverglate might be on the wrong side of the Armenian-holocaust debate. Silverglate is one of the lawyers seeking to overturn a state Holocaust curriculum that does not allow for the possibility that what Armenians call Turkish genocide might just have been a nasty civil war. In a long post in which he acknowledges he's not sure exactly what to think, Dan says:

... Harvey is right in thinking of this as a free-speech issue, but it's not solely a free-speech issue. It's also an educational issue. For instance, scientifically literate educators refuse to teach intelligent design not because they oppose free speech, but because there's no scientific basis for it.

Along the same lines, refusing to teach Massachusetts schoolchildren that what happened in the Ottoman Empire wasn't genocide may be less a matter of censorship than it is of not teaching bad history. ...

Do all points of view really need airing in schools?

adamg — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:11:48 +0000

Jen discusses a lawsuit that would require Massachusetts schools that teach about genocide to include the Turkish viewpoint on the Armenian genocide (basically, that it didn't happen):

... [S]hould the neo-Nazi point of view of the Holocaust be taught, as well?