Discourse with students should be encouraged

Thursday, February 19, 1998

Discourse with students should be encouraged

HISTORY: Department head distorts facts after rejection of
endowment

By Vachik Petrossian

The article published by Richard Von Glahn, chair of the
department of history, in UCLA Today (Jan. 12) raises some
important points to consider in accepting endowed chairs from
foreign governments. One can only agree that "repugnance toward the
human-rights record of the Turkish government and misgivings about
accepting money from a foreign government that can control access
to the object of study, in this case the archives of the defunct
Ottoman Empire" might have motivated those faculty who turned down
the chair. It is a fact that:

1. The government of Turkey has denied visas and access to the
Ottoman archives to researchers who do not follow its official view
of the past.

2. The government has recently forced Israel to withdraw the
nomination of Professor Ehud Toledano as ambassador to Turkey
because he once referred to the Armenian Genocide as a fact.

3. Turkey’s government has actively engaged in influencing
American academia for more than a decade and a half.

These are the reasons why 100 American writers and academics
from the most prestigious institutions, including Nobel Prize
winners, have condemned the academic practices of the Turkish
government.

The Armenian Students’ Association (ASA) is surprised by a
number of Von Glahn’s statements and the loaded language he uses to
make them. The department and faculty members were "bombarded," he
says, with "strongly-worded denunciations" of what opponents of the
chair "regarded as the Turkish government’s efforts to manipulate
historical scholarship." This was, he adds, "a ferocious storm of
protest." The ASA, on the other hand, believes that the American
people do still have the right to write letters to a department and
that UCLA students may visit the faculty during their office hours
to express their concerns without having to face such innuendo.

Von Glahn presumes that public opinion was manipulated and that
the student government should not have opposed the proposed chair
without consulting with him. What is implied in such views is that
the campus community and the student government were unable to form
independent judgments based on rational arguments and substantial
documentation, and that free, public debate is tantamount to
manipulation, especially if the outcome of such debate goes against
one’s own views. In fact, the student government had done much
investigation into the issue and had weighed the arguments before
making its position known. Indeed, students concerned about human
rights abuses, moral and ethical issues, and denial of genocide do
have a right, not to say an obligation, to take a public stand.

We are also surprised that Von Glahn speaks of "reprehensible
intimidation tactics (such as threats made to (him) and harassment
of department staff)." A member of this student organization did go
to see Von Glahn. The student prefaced his statement by making it
clear that he had come not to bother the chair of the department
but to share his concerns with him and to ask him a few questions.
The student reminded Von Glahn that accepting the chair with
conditions from a government with such a deplorable record of
denialism, human rights violations and lack of academic freedom
would damage the academic integrity of the university, and that if
the chair were accepted, the issue would not fade away, for the
community felt strongly about it. Von Glahn gave the unexpected
response that he regarded this as a threat and added in an uncivil
manner: "You don’t give a shit about the integrity of the
school."

Not only does the ASA condemn any threat and harassment tactics,
but we call on Von Glahn to come forward and give proof of such
actions. At a time when many complain about asserted student apathy
with regard to social and civic matters, one would expect that the
university as a whole, and department chairs in particular, would
encourage students engaging in meaningful exchange of views with
the faculty. We regret the chairperson’s slanting of the facts in
the wake of his department’s rejection of the Turkish chair.