Heath W. Lowry

Heath Ward Lowry (born December 23, 1942) is the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University. He has written several books on the history of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.

Contents

Background

Lowry spent two years (1964–1966) working as a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote mountain village in western Turkey before graduating from Portland State University (1966).[1] In the late '60s, he was a graduate student at UCLA working with scholars Speros Vryonis, Jr., Andreas Tietze, Gustav von Grunebaum, and Stanford J. Shaw, and received his PhD in 1977. He taught full-time at Bosphorus University during the 1970s and served as the Istanbul Director of the American Research Institute in Turkey.[2] Here he worked with some of the most renowned scholars in Ottoman studies, such as Omer Lutfi Barkan, Nejat Goyunc, and Cengiz Orhonlu.[3] Between 1979-1982 he co-directed a team of international scholars working on late Byzantine and early Ottoman historical demography, as a member of Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Center.[3] In 1980, he co-founded The Journal of Ottoman Studies, together with Nejat Göyünç and Halil İnalcık[4].

In 1983, with a group of distinguished scholars, businessmen, and retired diplomats and a grant from the Turkish government, he helped establish, and became the director of, the Institute of Turkish Studies [5] at Georgetown University,[6] which provides grants to scholars working in the area of Turkish studies. During this time, he began to study contemporary Turkish politics, and taught at the U.S. State Department's National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where his students were U.S. diplomats scheduled for assignment in Turkey.[3]

Since 1993, Lowry has been the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University, and served as the Director of the Program of Near Eastern Studies from July 1994 to June 1999. He currently offers seminars on early Ottoman history and undergraduate lecture courses on Ottoman history and contemporary Turkey.[3]

Views and critics

David B. MacDonald, of the Political Science department at the University of Guelph in Ontario, has labeled Lowry as one of the key deniers of the Armenian Genocide.[7] In 1985, Lowry was involved in organizing 69 academics who signed a letter expressing their opposition to U.S. official recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The letter was then printed in the New York Times and Washington Post.[6]

In 1990, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton received a letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, Nuzhet Kandemir,[8] questioning his inclusion of references to the Armenian Genocide in one of his books. The ambassador inadvertently included a draft of a letter written by professor Lowry, advising the ambassador on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works. The incident has been mentioned in criticisms of ethics in scholarship.[9][10] According to Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen and Robert Jay Lifton, Lowry was also "caught ghosting" for the Turkish ambassador in Washington regarding the denial of the Armenian Genocide.[11]

Commenting this affair, Michael M. Gunter concludes:

"However, how was Lowry acting in any way different from how Armenian scholars and their supporters have their long-running campaign against Turkey? When looked upon in such light, the Armenian reactions to the Lowry memorandums appear petty and hypocritical."[12]

Also, in 1990, he concluded that Ambassador Morgenthau's Story was a record of "crude half-truths and outright falsehoods".[13] According to Yair Auron, Lowry is recognized as a principal source discrediting Morgenthau, giving "impetus to the Turkish endeavor to deny the Armenian Genocide".[14] On the other hand, Gilles Veinstein, professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at the Collège de France considers as "rather instructive" Heath Lowry's book about Morgenthau[15] and, after to have "checked some of the alleged differences" between Ambassador's Morgenthau's Story and Morgenthau's archives, Guenter Lewy shares Heath Lowry's main conclusions about Morgenthau's Memoirs.[16]

Alan Fisher, professor of History at Michigan State University, supported Heath Lowry both against the critics and for his conclusions regarding the Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.[17]

Works

Notes

  1. ^ Wolfgang Behn, Handbuch der Orientalistik: Bio-Bibliographical Supplement to Index Islamicus, 1665-1980 (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik), vol. 2 (Brill, 2006: ISBN 9004150374), p. 458.
  2. ^ Haarman, Maria. Der Islam, p.302. C.H.Beck, 2002. ISBN 3406476406
  3. ^ a b c d http://www.princeton.edu/~nes/faculty_lowry.html
  4. ^ http://english.isam.org.tr/index.cfm?fuseaction=objects2.detail_content&cid=616&cat_id=21&chid=49
  5. ^ Chorbajian, Levon. Studies in Comparative Genocide, p.xxxiii. Macmillan, 1999. ISBN 0312219334.
  6. ^ a b MacDonald, David B. Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide, p.121. Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0415430615.
  7. ^ Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation, By David B. MacDonald, Routledge, 2008, ISBN 0415430615, p. 121
  8. ^ Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris, p.383. HarperCollins, 2003. ISBN 0060198400.
  9. ^ Smith, Roger W.; Markusen, Eric; Lifton, Robert Jay. Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide. Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9 (1): 1–22.(Spring 1995).
  10. ^ "Armenian Genocide Cannot Be Denied", letter to the editor from Robert Jay Lifton, New York Times, June 2, 1996
  11. ^ Smith, Roger W.; Markusen, Eric; Lifton, Robert Jay (Spring 1995). "Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide". Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9 (1): 1–22.
  12. ^ Michael M. Gunter, Armenian History and the Question of Genocide, New York-London, Palgrave MacMillan, 2011, p. 114.
  13. ^ Winter, J.M. America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915, p.302. Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521829585.
  14. ^ Auron, Yair. The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide,p. 258. Transaction Publishers, 2004. ISBN 076580834X
  15. ^ "Trois questions sur un massacre", L'Histoire, April 1995.
  16. ^ The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005, pp. 140-142
  17. ^ Alan Fisher, "Letter to the Editor", The New York Times, May 28, 1996.

External links