Inappropriate Academic Discourse

This week, we received a press release announcing an online petition organized by a group of disgruntled Armenian university students against what they call “falsifiers of Armenian history,” alleging that there is a concerted effort to falsify Armenian history within Armenian studies programs across the U.S.

The group says that this petition, which has been already signed by more than 1,300 Armenians, is “geared against the phenomena of falsification and distortion of Armenian history. Throughout many years, the false Armenological school has claimed that (1) the Armenian people are ‘newcomers’ and ‘colonists’ in historical Armenia and that the ancestors of Armenians arrived in the Armenian Highland in the 6th century BC and destroyed the ‘Urartians’; (2) the three outstanding fifth century historians, Pavstos Buzand, Movses Khorenatsi, and Yeghishe, are ‘pseudo-historians’; (3) the territory of Artsakh historically belongs to Azerbaijan, since the Turkic Azers are the direct descendants of the Caucasian Albanians.”