UCLA Chancellor Gene Block worked in-sync with ANCA to institutionalize the hate propaganda against Turks in UCLA. Gene Block’s nonstop endorsements and support of the Armenian racist politics in the US Education system is only causing harm to young generations, TADA is prepared to take all actions to help UCLA break out from politicized state.
April 23 2021
Gene Block
Chancellor
UCLA
Box 951405, 2147 Murphy Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1405
Re: Education Examining Armenian Genocide Allegations
Dear Mr. Chancellor:
In September 2018, you visited Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the Republic of Armenia to strengthen ties with Armenian higher education institutions, among other things. We applaud all bona fide educational endeavors. As H.G. Wells observed, “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe.”
It seems clear from your tweets and companion remarks, you firmly subscribe to Armenian genocide allegations. If the matter were of little or no practical moment, I would not bother you with this letter.
But history teaches that the Armenian genocide claim is too important and incendiary to be left to a jumble of political calculations with ulterior motives.
In 1982, Armenian Harry Sassounian assassinated Turkey’s counsel general in Los Angeles Kemal Arikan to avenge unproven Armenian genocide allegations. They gave birth to twin Armenian terrorist organizations which have perpetrated violence against Turkey, Turkey diplomats, and Turkish Americans on an industrial scale: the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA); and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG).
The former sports a logo with an AK-47 on a background of Armenian boundaries that include swaths of territory under Turkish sovereignty. Not a single Armenian American or Armenian American organization has ever condemned or disowned the terrorist handiwork of Sassounian, ASALA, or the JCAG.
In 1977, the home of UCLA Professor Stanford Shaw was firebombed to silence his voice against Armenian genocide allegations. Professor Shaw ceased teaching and moved his home after campus police were warned that a “Turkish professor” might become a target of violence.
A large majority of Turkish Americans have experienced hatred, villainy, or fierce antagonism from Armenian Americans uncontrollably furious over Armenian genocide allegations.
Renowned historians dispute the allegations, including Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, Guenter Lewy of the University of Massachusetts, Stanford Shaw of UCLA, and Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville.
The European Court of Human Rights, of which Armenia is a member and Turkey is not, in Perincek v. Switzerland (1915) explained that the Armenian genocide is contested among academics and has never been proven in any tribunal, unlike the Holocaust. The European Court added that “historical research is by definition subject to controversy and dispute and does not readily lend itself to definitive conclusions or assertions of objective and absolute truths.”
Armenia refuses to open its archives related to the alleged genocide, whereas Turkey, Russia, Germany, France, the UK, and the United States have. Is Armenia hiding evidence that discredits their genocide allegations?
On February 26, 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Armenian spokespersons highlighted that Ottoman Armenians were “belligerents” with the Entente Powers throughout World War I and sought secession like the Confederate States of America in the U.S. Civil War; and that Ottoman Turks died in the same proportion as Ottoman Armenians during the war. The late Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, maintained, “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations…It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide.”
The Ottoman Empire exhibited no history of hostility towards Armenians. Indeed, the latter flourished at the highest levels of the Ottoman bureaucracy. Particularly in the 19th century, twenty-nine Armenians commanded the highest military-governmental rank of Pasha, general. There were twenty-two Armenian ministers in Ottoman Administration, including the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Treasury, Trade and Post. Armenians also held high positions at the departments entrusted with agriculture, economic development, and the census. Armenian representatives numbering thirty-three were appointed and elected to the Ottoman Parliament, seven were ambassadors, eleven were consuls-general and consuls, eleven were university professors, and forty-one were other officials of high rank.
Article IX of the Convention Against Genocide authorizes Armenia to submit its claim of a Turkish genocide of Armenians to the International Court of Justice. Armenia has declined during the 70 years that have elapsed since the convention entered into force to test their allegations before a court of law. Instead, Armenians have brandished their considerable political clout and wealth to prod governments and legislators around the world to parrot their genocide narrative in exchange for political favors.
It is especially URGENT that universities make critical thinking and exposure to a diversity of views loadstars of their educational protocols. The United States Supreme Court elaborated in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957):
“No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.”
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss with UCLA how the study of Armenian genocide allegations on campus may be enriched to advance critical thinking.
Sincerely,
/s/Ugur Kara
Ugur Kara
President
/s/Bruce Fein
Bruce Fein
General Counsel to the Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance.
Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance.
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