Limits on Academic Inquiry

Ann Lousin

To the Editor:

The problem with the Turkish studies chairs funded by the Turkish government stems from an obvious pattern of funding chairs with strings attached. The biggest string is the clause, which I have seen in some contracts, requiring the holder of the chair to have "good relations" with the Ottoman Archives, the Turkish government’s repository of documents about the Ottoman Empire and, perforce, the Armenian millet. Hilmar Kaiser, a researcher at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, was recently denied access "for life" to those primary-source archives, obviously because his writings displease the Turkish government. Even the diplomatic objections of the Federal Republic of Germany did not move the Turkish government to readmit him.

One has to remember that Turkish laws permit the jailing of journalists and writers who criticize certain basic institutions of government. Jailings are, unfortunately, a regular occurrence. One can surmise that they have a "chilling effect" upon serious writers and academics in Turkey itself.

One also has to remember that Turkey has insufficient funds to provide secondary education for all of its population of 60 million and yet is willing to spend millions on Turkish chairs in the United States, the richest country in the world. Why, except to spread a "Turkish" point of view in foreign educational institutions?

I have been mildly successful in discovering which public universities have "good relations with the Ottoman Archives" clauses in their contracts with the Turkish government, but have had far less success regarding private universities. They are closemouthed. I can only conclude that in these days of tight funding, universities are willing to "shade their research" to suit a donor, even if the donor is a foreign government that requires that the holder of the chair pass muster with archives run by that government.

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