Discussion: Racial Injustice and Responsibility

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and as part of an ongoing lecture series hosted by St. Leon Armenian Church of Fair Lawn, NJ, a virtual discussion will be held on June 23, 2020 to examine racial injustice and responsibility. The talk will shed light on the legacy of racial violence and inequality from post-emancipation to the present while also looking at the role and responsibility—political and moral—of non-perpetrators of historical and contemporary violence in sustaining systemic injustice, domination and racism.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Henry Theriault, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Worcester State University. Dr. Theriault’s expertise is in genocide and human rights studies, and his research focuses on reparations, victim-perpetrator relations, genocide denial, genocide prevention, and mass violence against women and girls.

Panel participants include Jermaine McCalpin, Ph.D., Kohar Avakian and Michael Rothberg, Ph.D. His Grace Bishop Daniel Findikyan will deliver opening remarks.

Dr. Jermaine McCalpin is the Chair of African & African American Studies at the New Jersey City University. Dr. McCalpin is an internationally recognized expert and consultant on transitional justice, genocides and reparations. He has traveled to South Africa, Cambodia, Armenia and across the United States and Canada researching and presenting on the Armenian Genocide, the transatlantic trade in Africans and reparations, truth commissions and issues of justice. Dr. McCalpin specializes in Africana political philosophy, Caribbean political thought, and transitional justice.

Kohar Avakian is a Ph.D. candidate of American Studies at Yale University. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, Avakian authored a senior thesis examining legal whiteness in the United States using the case study of Armenian immigrants in Worcester. Her current research focuses on the intersection of race, migration and genocide in the United States.

Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Rothberg works in the fields of Holocaust studies, trauma and memory studies, critical theory and cultural studies, postcolonial studies and contemporary literature. His latest book is The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Arguing that the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account for our connection to injustices past and present, Michael Rothberg offers a new theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject. The Implicated Subject engages in reflection and analysis of cultural texts, archives, and activist movements from such contested zones as transitional South Africa, contemporary Israel/Palestine, post-Holocaust Europe, and a transatlantic realm marked by the afterlives of slavery. He shows how confronting our own implication in difficult histories can lead to new forms of internationalism and long-distance solidarity.

The discussion will be held on Tuesday, June 23rd at 7:30 p.m. Register via Zoom or watch on YouTube.

The event is jointly sponsored by AGBU Ararat, Armenian Bar Association, Armenian Network of America—Greater NY, Daughters of Vartan-Sahaganoush Otyag, Justice Armenia, Knights of Vartan-Bakradouny Lodge, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Topics, St. Leon Armenian Church, St. Leon ACYOA Seniors, and Zohrab Information Center .