Taner Akçam Teaches ‘Genocide 101′ in Germany

BERLIN — Two classes of high school students in northern Germany had the rare opportunity to learn about the Armenian genocide from one of the most authoritative researchers on the topic, Prof. Taner Akçam from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
During his brief visit to Germany over the Thanksgiving holidays November 26-29, Akçam also lectured for adults, among them a seminar group at the Free University in Berlin, and a broader general public at the Potsdam University and the Lepsiushaus in Potsdam. For Akçam it was not foreign territory. As the dean of the philosophy department of the Potsdam University noted in introducing him, Akçam had found political asylum in Germany after his escape from prison in Turkey, where he had been sentenced for articles he had written about the Kurds. In 1996 he took a degree from the Hannover University with a thesis on the Armenian Genocide and then worked at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, before moving the US, where he studied at the University of Minnesota and Michigan, and went on to a position at Clark University.Read Further...