In-Person at NYU Department of Philosophy, 5 Washington Place, Auditorium 101 (Ground Floor) New York, NY
Registration is required of all attendees.
Please note that proof of covid vaccination including one booster is required for NYU building access. Upon arrival, guests must show proof of government ID and provide proof of covid vaccination, including at least one booster, if requested.
PRESENTER
MARC A. MAMIGONIAN, Director of Acacemic Affairs, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
DISCUSSANT
DR. LERNA EKMEKCIOGLU, Associate Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
The American civil rights leader Medgar Evers is credited with saying “You can kill a man but you can’t kill an idea.” But the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the Republic of Turkey have tried, and in some ways succeeded, in having it both ways. First they killed the Armenians, and then they tried to kill the idea that they had killed the Armenians. Turkey’s protégé state Azerbaijan has emulated its “big brother,” expunging the region of Nakhiche-van of all evidence of Armenian existence, threatening Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) with annihilation while eradicating evidence of Armenians’ presence in the region, and, in effect, denying the existence of Armenia as such.
While recognition by the U.S. Congress (2019) and President Biden (2021) of the Armenian Genocide are in themselves important and contribute to the never-ending pushback against genocide denial, they do not signal that efforts to deny the Armenian Genocide are in retreat. Turkey’s official denialist stance remains unchanged and efforts to push its narrative in academic, journalistic, and think tank circles are undiminished. Concurrently, Azerbaijan’s successful 2020 war against Armenia, carried out with crucial support from Turkey, has emboldened efforts to promote its own counterfactual agenda.
This presentation will focus on several efforts since 2019 to continue and expand the long-running project of Armenian Genocide denial and will also discuss how it dovetails with the efforts of Azerbaijan to rewrite history as a means to dictate Armenia’s future but also its past.
CO-SPONSORS
NYU Global Institute for Advanced Study, Armenian Genocide Denial Project
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
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