MANUFACTURING DENIAL: ON SCHOLARSHIP AND TRUTH LECTURE AND CONFERENCE Social scientists, natural scientists, political theorists, and historians will discuss different forms of denial and why they persist in the face of facts. Participants will consider how scholarship has become the battleground in this struggle — which resonates far beyond academe. Presentations will focus on genocide denial, scientific denial, and political denial. 24–25 OCTOBER 2014 950 Main Street Worcester MA 01610-1477 Marc A. Mamigonian is the Director of Academic Affairs at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the editor of the Journal of Armenian Studies. He is the author of reviews and essays on various literary, historical, and popular culture topics. He is co-author of several scholarly articles and commentaries on the works of James Joyce. Lou Ann Matossian heads diocesan fundraising for the Armenian Church of America (New York) and is a trusted advisor for Armenian-American philanthropy. She created the grant-making program of the Cafesjian Family Foundation (Minnesota) and serves on the board of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the executive group of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Minnesota. Most recently, she translated Special Mission: Nemesis, a French graphic novel about the assassination of Talaat Pasha, and edited Taner Akçam’s The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity. Khatchig Mouradian is Coordinator of the Armenian Genocide Program at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, where he is also adjunct professor of history and sociology. Mouradian was editor of Armenian Weekly from 2007-2014. He is recipient of the Gulbenkian Armenian Studies research fellowship to study the Armenian community in China in the 20th century (2014) and of the first Hrant Dink Freedom and Justice Medal (2014) of the Organization of Istanbul Armenians. Mouradian is active in genocide and human rights education, delivering more than two hundred lectures and presentations in high schools and colleges nationwide and to varied audiences around the world, including in Armenia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Norway, Switzerland, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Mouradian is a PhD candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, currently completing his dissertation, which is titled, “Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1917.” Brendan Nyhan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. He studies political scandal and misperceptions about politics and health care. He is a contributor to the New York Times politics/policy website The Upshot. Previously, he served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review; co-edited Spinsanity, a nonpartisan watchdog of political spin that was syndicated in Salon and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and co-authored All the President’s Spin, a New York Times bestseller. Shawn K. Olson is a doctoral student in environmental sociology at Utah State University. Her research investigates environmental skepticism broadly, including beliefs about climate change. Her most recent work examines social perceptions of large-scale renewable energy installations in the rural American West. Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He has a background and interest in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science. His most recent book, edited with Maarten Boudry, is Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago Press). Henry Theriault is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Worcester State University. He has published and spoken widely on his research on reparations, victim- perpetrator relations, genocide denial, genocide prevention, and mass violence against women and girls. In June-July 2013 he was Visiting Scholar at the Australian National Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. He is founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed Genocide Studies International and was recently named co-editor of Transaction Publishers’ Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, as well as serving as chair of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group and lead author of its forthcoming report, Resolution with Justice (armeniangenocidereparations.info). Johanna Vollhardt is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clark and head of the Social Psychology doctoral program. She examines the impact of collective victimization on relations with other groups and the psychology of genocide. She serves on the governing council of the International Society of Political Psychology and is founding co-editor of the Journal of Social and Political Psychology . She co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues on “The aftermath of genocide: psychological perspectives” (2013) and organized a 2012 conference, “Advancing the Psychology of Genocide and Ethnic Conflict: Integrating Social Psychological Theories and Historical Data.” Her most recent line of research addresses the psychological impact of experiences of acknowledgment versus denial among members of groups that were targeted by genocide and other mass atrocities. Keith Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of History and Director the of University of California, Davis Human Rights Initiative. His first book, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, 2006) examined Arab nationalism and the rise of the Syrian middle class. His second book, Bread from Stones: the Middle East and the making of Modern Humanitarianism, will be published early next year. His research on Baathism, the Armenian Genoicde, Syria’s minorities, and other issues has appeared in several journals and translated into four languages. Watenpaugh is a recent American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, Senior Fellow in International Peace at the United States Institute of Peace, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. He led an interdisciplinary team of researchers — on behalf of the Human Rights Initiative, the Institute of International Education and the Carnegie Corporation of New York — to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to investigate conditions facing Syrian refugee university students and professors. The subsequent report has helped shape international higher education policy and relief efforts.
Transcript
MANUFACTURING D E N I A L :
ON SCHOLARSHIP A N D T R U T HLECTURE AND CONFERENCESocial scientists, natural scientists, political theorists, and historians will discuss different forms of denial and why they persist in the face of facts. Participants will consider how scholarship has become the battleground in this struggle — which resonates far beyond academe. Presentations will focus on genocide denial, scientific denial, and political denial.
24–25 OCTOBER 2014
950 Main StreetWorcester MA 01610-1477
Marc A. Mamigonian is the Director of Academic Affairs at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the editor of the Journal of Armenian Studies. He is the author of reviews and essays on various literary, historical, and popular culture topics. He is co-author of several scholarly articles and commentaries on the works of James Joyce.
Lou Ann Matossian heads diocesan fundraising for the Armenian Church of America (New York) and is a trusted advisor for Armenian-American philanthropy. She created the grant-making program of the Cafesjian Family Foundation (Minnesota) and serves on the board of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the executive group of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Minnesota. Most recently, she translated Special Mission: Nemesis, a French graphic novel about the assassination of Talaat Pasha, and edited Taner Akçam’s The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity.
Khatchig Mouradian is Coordinator of the Armenian Genocide Program at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, where he is also adjunct professor of history and sociology. Mouradian was editor of Armenian Weekly from 2007-2014. He is recipient of the Gulbenkian Armenian Studies research fellowship to study the Armenian community in China in the 20th century (2014) and of the first Hrant Dink Freedom and Justice Medal (2014) of the Organization of Istanbul Armenians. Mouradian is active in genocide and human rights education, delivering more than two hundred lectures and presentations in high schools and colleges nationwide and to varied audiences around the world, including in Armenia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Norway, Switzerland, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Mouradian is a PhD candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, currently completing his dissertation, which is titled, “Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1917.”
Brendan Nyhan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. He studies political scandal and misperceptions about politics and health care. He is a contributor to the New York Times politics/policy website The Upshot. Previously, he served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review; co-edited Spinsanity, a nonpartisan watchdog of political spin that was syndicated in Salon and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and co-authored All the President’s Spin, a New York Times bestseller.
Shawn K. Olson is a doctoral student in environmental sociology at Utah State University. Her research investigates environmental skepticism broadly, including beliefs about climate change. Her most recent work examines social perceptions of large-scale renewable energy installations in the rural American West.
Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He has a background and interest in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science. His most recent book, edited with Maarten Boudry, is Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago Press).
Henry Theriault is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Worcester State University. He has published and spoken widely on his research on reparations, victim-perpetrator relations, genocide denial, genocide prevention, and mass violence against women and girls. In June-July 2013 he was Visiting Scholar at the Australian National Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. He is founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed Genocide Studies International and was recently named co-editor of Transaction Publishers’ Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, as well as serving as chair of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group and lead author of its forthcoming report, Resolution with Justice (armeniangenocidereparations.info).
Johanna Vollhardt is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clark and head of the Social Psychology doctoral program. She examines the impact of collective victimization on relations with other groups and the psychology of genocide. She serves on the governing council of the International Society of Political Psychology and is founding co-editor of the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. She co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues on “The aftermath of genocide: psychological perspectives” (2013) and organized a 2012 conference, “Advancing the Psychology of Genocide and Ethnic Conflict: Integrating Social Psychological Theories and Historical Data.” Her most recent line of research addresses the psychological impact of experiences of acknowledgment versus denial among members of groups that were targeted by genocide and other mass atrocities.
Keith Watenpaugh is Associate Professor of History and Director the of University of California, Davis Human Rights Initiative. His first book, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, 2006) examined Arab nationalism and the rise of the Syrian middle class. His second book, Bread from Stones: the Middle East and the making of Modern Humanitarianism, will be published early next year. His research on Baathism, the Armenian Genoicde, Syria’s minorities, and other issues has appeared in several journals and translated into four languages. Watenpaugh is a recent American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, Senior Fellow in International Peace at the United States Institute of Peace, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. He led an interdisciplinary team of researchers — on behalf of the Human Rights Initiative, the Institute of International Education and the Carnegie Corporation of New York — to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to investigate conditions facing Syrian refugee university students and professors. The subsequent report has helped shape international higher education policy and relief efforts.
Keynote address Brendan Nyhan The Challenge of Denial: Why People Refuse to Accept Unwelcome Facts
Response & Discussion Henry Theriault
SATURDAY, 25 OCTOBER, 2014 CLARK UNIVERSITY, HIGGINS LOUNGE, DANA COMMONS
8–8:30 a.m. Check-In and Coffee
8:30–10:30 a.m. Session 1: Modern Strategies and Rhetoric of DenialModerator Lou Ann Matossian
Marc Mamigonian Academic Denial of the Armenian Genocide in American Scholarship: Denialism as Manufactured Controversy
Sara Brown Genocide Denial in Rwanda and the Role of Women TIGists
Shawn Olson Wise Contrarians in Climate Science, Politics, and Policy: Exploring the Rhetoric and Strategies of Denial
10:30–11 a.m. Coffee Break
11 a.m.–1 p.m. Session 2: Political Uses of DenialModerator Taner Akçam
Jennifer Dixon It’s Not What You Think: Rhetorical Adaptation and International Norms
Alex Hinton Hidden Genocide and the Politics of Memory in Cambodia
Mark Gottlieb The Tobacco Industry’s Mass Production of Doubt and Denial
1:15–2:15 p.m. Lunch
2:30–4:30 p.m. Session 3: Countering Denial: How and When?Moderator Dikran Kaligian
Keith Watenpaugh Genocide Denial and the Historian’s Ethical Responsibility to the Past
Ken MacLean Evidentiary Thresholds, Hierarchies of Proof, and the Technical Denial of Mass Atrocity Crimes in Burma: A Case Study in Failure
Emma Frances Bloomfield Addressing Rhetorical Patterns of Denial: When Climate Change, Evolution, and the Holocaust Never Happened
4:30 p.m. Coffee Break
4:45–6:30 p.m. Session 4: Summing Up and Open Discussion Johanna Vollhardt, Richard Hovannisian, Massimo Pigliucci
Co-sponsored by: The Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University; the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair at the Strassler Center; the Armenian Genocide Program at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research; and Worcester State University (Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity, and other departments and offices).
Conference Organizing Committee: Taner Akçam, Sarah Cushman, Debórah Dwork, Marc Mamigonian, Khatchig Mouradian, Henry Theriault
Taner Akçam is Professor of History at Clark University, where he holds the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies. An internationally recognized human rights activist, he was one of the first Turkish intellectuals to recognize the Armenian Genocide. He is the author of several books including, most recently, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (2012), which earned the Middle East Studies Association Albert Hourani Book Award (2013) and was named one of the year’s best books on the Middle East (2012) by Foreign Affairs.
Emma Frances Bloomfield is a PhD candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She is currently writing her dissertation on the intersections between science and religious rhetoric and how they negotiate material and symbolic reality. Specific areas of study include how these intersections raise issues of fact, truth, and expediency; the dichotomy between religion and science; and the ways in which groups attempt to bridge the gaps and establish blended identities.
Sara E. Brown is the Stern Family Fellow and the first comparative genocide doctoral candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her dissertation, Gender and Agency: Women Rescuers and Perpetrators during the Rwandan Genocide, explores women who exercised agency during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Brown has worked and conducted research in Rwanda since 2004. She regularly travels there to conduct interviews with survivors, perpetrators, rescuers, and witnesses of the genocide.
Jennifer M. Dixon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011 and was a Research Fellow in the International Security Program of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Her research lies at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. She focuses on the politics of memory, genocide and mass violence, and the diffusion and impact of international norms. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Changing the State’s Story: Continuity and Change in Official Narratives of Dark Pasts.
Debórah Dwork is Rose Professor of Holocaust History at Clark University and founding Director of the Strassler Center. Dedicated to teaching, research, and public service, she is a leading authority on university education in this field. A member of the U.S. delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Dwork also serves on advisory boards and works with non-profit organizations concerned with Holocaust education. Dwork is the author of many books, including, A Boy in Terezín (2012) and Flight from the Reich (2009). Her current book project, Saints and Liars, explores the history of Americans who traveled to Europe to aid and rescue imperiled Jews.
Mark Gottlieb is executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law. For more than 20 years, his research has addressed legal approaches to reducing harm caused by tobacco industry products, including coordination of a movement for tobacco company accountability; reduction of tobacco smoke exposure; and restriction of the sale of tobacco products. He also directs research pertaining to tobacco and food industry argumentation about responsibility, and has been a principal investigator for research products addressing child health. He has authored or co-authored pieces in the New England Medical Journal, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of the American Medical Association, PLoS Medicine, and Tobacco Control. His views on industry tactics affecting public health are sought by journalists.
Alexander Hinton is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark, and holds the UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention. He is the author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2005), for which he received the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. He is editor or co-editor of nine collections and is currently working on several book projects, including one on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He is Academic Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, serves on the International Advisory Boards of the Journal of Genocide Research and Genocide Studies and Prevention, and is co-editor of the CGHR-Rutgers University Press book series, “Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights.” Professor Hinton was a Member (2011-12) and Visitor (2012-13) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Richard G. Hovannisian is Professor Emeritus of History and First Holder of the AEF Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA. He is currently Chancellor’s Fellow at Chapman University and Adjunct Professor of History at USC for academic support to the Shoah Foundation Institute.
Dikran M. Kaligian is Managing Editor of the Armenian Review and teaches at Worcester State University. He earned his PhD in history from Boston College in 2003. His book, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908-1914 was published in 2009; he has written articles for the Journal of Genocide Research, Armenian Review, and in the books Through a Lens Darkly: Films of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing and Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies.
Ken MacLean is Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change at Clark University. He conducts research in Southeast Asia and has worked extensively with human rights NGOs in the region. His first book, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press. He is currently working on two book-length projects, on the production of “fact” regarding mass atrocities in eastern Burma/Myanmar and the forces that shape freedom of expression and censorship in the Vietnamese “blogosphere.”
