A Federal Court on March 30 dismissed the Turkish Coalition of America’s (TCA) case against the University of Minnesota, University President Robert Bruininks, and Prof. Bruno Chaouat, the director of the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS), for having included the TCA’s website on a list of “unreliable websites” due to the latter’s denial of the Armenian Genocide.
“We welcome the Federal District Court decision throwing out the Turkish Coalition of America’s unfounded lawsuit against the University of Minnesota,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Today’s ruling, coming, as it does, at the very outset of the Turkish Coalition’s case, clearly underscores that its efforts have little to do with the law. From Massachusetts to California and Minnesota, U.S. courts are refusing to serve as tools of Turkish denial. It is, thankfully, just as clear that no matter what allies of Ankara spend, the truth about the Armenian Genocide cannot be silenced, nor can our drive for justice for this crime be obstructed.”
Below is the Chronicle of Higher Education coverage of the Federal Court dismissal of the Turkish Coalition case against the University of Minnesota. To view the article, visit http://chronicle.com/article/Court-Dismisses-Turkish/126938/.
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Court Dismisses Turkish Group’s Lawsuit Against U. of Minnesota Over Web Site
By Peter Schmidt
An academic center at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was within its rights when it discouraged students from using a Web site that challenges claims Armenians were victims of genocide by Ottoman Turks, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday in dismissing a lawsuit brought against the university by a student and a Turkish advocacy group.
The judge, Donovan W. Frank of the U.S. District Court in St. Paul, said in his ruling that academic freedom protected the right of the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies to tell students a Web site maintained by the Turkish Coalition of America should be avoided as unreliable. He rejected the coalition’s assertion that the center’s characterization of the Web site amounted to defamation, holding that the center’s assessment of the site was a constitutionally protected academic opinion and not a purported statement of fact that could conceivably be proved false in court.
“The ability of the university and its faculty to determine the reliability of sources available to students to use in their research falls squarely within the university’s freedom to determine how particular course work shall be taught,” the ruling says. The center’s conclusion that the killing of Armenians during World War I was an act of genocide similarly is a viewpoint “within the purview of the university’s academic freedom to comment on and critique academic views held and expressed by others,” Judge Frank wrote.
The lawsuit brought against the university by the Turkish Coalition and a freshman who had sought to use its Web site in class had been closely watched by several scholarly groups. The Middle East Studies Association had issued an open letter urging the center to withdraw its lawsuit, arguing that it posed a threat to academic freedom. The International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Society for Armenian Studies had similarly defended the university’s decision to discourage students from using the Turkish Coalition site.
Bruce E. Fein, a lawyer for the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund who helped represent the plaintiffs in the case, said he was “disappointed” with the judge’s decision but did not know whether the plaintiffs planned to appeal. “We certainly agree that academic freedom needs be defended,” he said, but the judge failed to see whose side the principle was on, by missing how the university center was citing academic freedom as a pretext for “suppressing an idea.”
Mr. Fein said the Turkish Coalition nonetheless was grateful that the center had chosen, in the midst of the controversy, to remove from its own Web site a list of “unreliable Web sites” that had included the coalition’s. Although the center has denied the list was removed in response to the coalition’s complaints, Mr. Fein alleged that the deletion of the list represented “a tacit concession” that the posting of such a list had not been in accordance with mainstream pedagogy.
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