Why my disappointment shifted to Armenia’s leadership

In recent days, Armenian audiences across social and media platforms have reacted strongly to a post on X by Lebanese American thinker, philosopher and essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In that statement, Taleb declined an invitation to lecture in Azerbaijan, saying he would not set foot in the country while Ruben Vardanyan remains imprisoned there.

Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan, “Antifragile” and “Skin in the Game,” noted that he had been invited to Baku and that the organizers had significantly increased the proposed honorarium, apparently assuming that a higher payment might influence his decision. It did not. For Taleb, it was an ethical decision, not a logistical one.

Taleb’s statement brought me back to a conversation I had with a former colleague months after the forced displacement from Artsakh. While we were recalling our lives there, as refugees often do, returning repeatedly to the same memories, my colleague referred to a passage from “The Black Swan” in which Taleb describes Lebanese refugees who, even after many years, never fully settled in their new environments. They lived in a state of suspension, as if in waiting rooms, building their lives around a permanent anticipation of return. That longing shaped their choices and their sense of time. Taleb writes that the initial response is often denial: a refusal to accept a radically uncertain reality and a tendency to rely on comforting but ultimately destructive illusions.

At the time, I found refuge in Yerevan, where a diasporan Armenian family received me into their home with care and generosity. After some time, they noticed that I had not unpacked my suitcase, the only one I had managed to bring with me. They assumed I felt uncomfortable and made space for my belongings, encouraging me to settle. I hesitated. That half-open suitcase was my illusion of return. Like the refugees described by Taleb, I was not ready to arrive anywhere, because arrival would have meant accepting the possibility of permanent loss. My colleague said he returns to that passage often out of fear of falling into the trap of that comforting, destructive illusion that a return home is just “a matter of time.”

After that conversation, I revisited the passage in the book and found myself confronting an unresolved question: What does time mean for a refugee? How long do adaptation and integration take, and is either ever fully possible? Even now, nearly three years after the forced displacement of Armenians from Artsakh, many of us remain in that suspended condition.

Advertisement

Taleb’s refusal to visit Baku recalls a separate conversation from the immediate aftermath of the forced displacement. I had just arrived in Yerevan, still struggling to comprehend the scale of what had happened, when I met a journalist who had followed my work throughout the blockade, the war and the subsequent ethnic cleansing. As we spoke, our discussion turned to another author I had long admired: Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and philosopher. At that exact moment, Harari was in Baku, delivering a lecture on the universe in the age of artificial intelligence.

When the journalist mentioned that he knew Harari personally, I told him directly of my deep disappointment and said I could no longer engage with Harari’s work in the same way. How can one speak about the universe when the traces of a humanitarian catastrophe on Earth remain so immediate in my home country? Harari, who has written extensively about human suffering, violence and historical responsibility, chose to lecture in Baku in the immediate aftermath of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Artsakh. While advocating for humanism and universal values, he chose, at a critical moment, to whitewash the actions of the Azerbaijani dictatorship — precisely the reason the regime uses its vast resources to invite influential figures.

And now, in contrast, Taleb’s actions align with his argument in “Skin in the Game”: that moral authority requires personal risk, and one cannot claim principles without being willing to bear their consequences. His refusal to travel to Baku reflects precisely that position.

At that moment, the journalist did not argue. He hugged me and offered to text his friend Harari directly to convey my message of deep disappointment. I agreed, and even that brought relief.

However, looking back after three years gives pause, especially when viewing in retrospect the situation in Armenia and the shifting moods and discourse surrounding the loss of Artsakh, the forced displacement and the Armenian hostages in Baku. 

Three years ago, forcibly displaced Armenians from Artsakh had not yet been told they “should have died instead of our children,” and refugee women with children had not been accused of cowardice or singled out by the Prime Minister. 

The word “Artsakh” itself had not yet become something to be avoided or contested. A refugee child’s drawing of “We Are Our Mountains” would not have been removed from a school display. Three years ago, representatives of the ruling political party still would not have avoided speaking about ethnic cleansing, rights, responsibility and the Armenian hostages in Baku, including Ruben Vardanyan, whose name Taleb chose to emphasize.

Today, when I think back to my disappointment in Harari, I am no longer certain that is where my resentment belongs. It is no longer about Harari. The failure lies closer to home, within Armenia’s own political leadership. While global thinkers like Taleb are willing to risk their reputations to take a principled stance and defend Ruben Vardanyan, Yerevan’s ruling party cannot even manage to do no harm — choosing instead to turn its media apparatus against the very captives it should be fighting for. 

This is not a critique of official engagement with Azerbaijan or of the search for diplomatic paths toward peace; it is a reckoning with the betrayal of the most basic principles, in the spirit of “Skin in the Game”: a leadership that demands sacrifice from its own people while remaining insulated from the consequences of its decisions.