[Bilimsel Haber] MESA Academic Freedom Award

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

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Date: 07 Dec 2005 17:25 EET
From: TSA/H-Net List for Turkish and Ottoman History and Culture
<H-TURK@h-net.msu.edu>
Subject: H-TURK: MESA Academic Freedom Award [K Watenpaugh]

It gives me great pleasure to share the following information with the
relevant H-Net list
communities

Keith Watenpaugh
CAFMENA

MESA ACADEMIC FREEDOM AWARD 2005

At its 70th board meeting in November 2001, the Middle East Studies
Association's board of directors established the MESA Academic Freedom
Award, to be presented on appropriate occasions in recognition of sustained
contributions to the promotion and defense of academic freedom in the Middle
East and North Africa. In 2005 the Committee on Academic Freedom in the Middle
East and North Africa proposed making two awards, and the Board has agreed with
this recommendation.

The first of our 2005 Academic Freedom Awards goes tonight to Fatma Muge Gocek
of the University of Michigan and Ron Suny of the University of Chicago, and all
the scholars associated with the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Scholarship, in
recognition of their successful collective effort, using the tools of history
and the social sciences and relying on the language of collegial discourse, to
initiate and implement a project that overcame political divisions in society
and in the academy and has provided a model that others addressing other
conflicted histories can use in the years ahead.

In the year 2000, these scholars initiated a series of conferences between
Armenian, Armenian-American, Turkish and Turkish-American historians and
specialists that addressed issues raised by the 1915 destruction of the Ottoman
Empire's Armenian population. In September 2005 they achieved a noteworthy
milestone when Istanbul's Bilgi University hosted some members at a conference
on these issues, also organized by Bogazici and Sabanci universities, despite
considerable opposition from a number of political leaders and groups in Turkey.

MESA celebrates their efforts as an elegant example of how academic freedom
works and why it must be protected and promoted. We trust that their efforts
will serve as a model to be emulated elsewhere.

Please join me in saluting the strong collective work of the Workshop on
Armenian-Turkish Scholarship, recipients of a MESA Academic Freedom Award for
2005.