Vahakn Dadrian


Vahakn Norair Dadrian was an Armenian-American sociologist and historian, born in Turkey, professor of sociology, historian, and an expert on the Armenian Genocide. He was one of the early scholars of the academic study of genocide and recognized as one of the key thinkers on the Holocaust and genocide.

Biography

Vahakn Norair Dadrian was born in 1926 in Turkey to a family that lost many members during the Armenian Genocide. Dadrian first studied mathematics at the University of Berlin, after which he decided to switch to a completely different field, and studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, and later, international law at the University of Zürich. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago.
In the 1970s, Dadrian participated in the creation of the comparative study of genocide.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree for his research in the field of Armenian Genocide Studies by the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, and later, in 1998, he was made a member of the Academy and honored by the President of Armenia, the republic's highest cultural award, the Khorenatzi medal. In 1999, Dadrian was awarded on behalf of the Holy See of Cilicia the Mesrob Mashdots Medal. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sponsored him as director of a large Genocide study project, which culminated with the publication of articles, mainly in the Holocaust and Genocide studies magazines. He was the keynote speaker at the centennial of the John Marshall Law School and delivered a lecture to the British House of Commons in 1995. He also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He has lectured extensively in French, English and German in the Free University of Berlin, the Universities of Munich, Parma, Torino, Zürich, Uppsala, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Bochum, Münster, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Geneva, Brussels and UNESCO’s Paris center.
In 1970–1991 Dadrian was a professor of sociology at State University of New York-College at Geneseo.
In 1981, a college arbitrator at State University College at Geneseo found him guilty of four charges of sexual harassment, but allowed him to return to work because the arbitrator believed they were "singular events that would not happen again." In 1991, State University College at Geneseo dismissed Dadrian for sexual harassment after a female student had complained he had kissed her on the lips on April 24, 1990.
Dadrian was the director of Genocide Research at Zoryan Institute.
Vahakn Dadrian died on August 2, 2019, at the age of 93. After his death, President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian sent a letter of condolences to Dadrian's family and friends.

Academic research

The particularity of Dadrian's research is that by mastering many languages, including German, English, French, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, and Armenian, he has researched archives of different countries, and extensively studied materials in various languages in a way that very few, if anyone has done before him. One of Dadrian's major researches is the volume titled The History of the Armenian Genocide which had seven printings and appeared in numerous languages. In this book Dadrian described the background, initiation and unfolding of the genocide, and placed it within a conceptual framework of genocide theory. Roger W. Smith praised it as a "rare work, over 20 years in the making, that is at once fascinating to read, comprehensive in scope, and unsurpassed in the documentation of the events it describes." According to William Schabas, the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, "Dadrian's historical research on the Armenian Genocide is informed by a rich grasp of the legal issues", and "his contribution both to historical and legal scholarship is enormous."
Dadrian's latest project is the translation of the Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20 from Ottoman Turkish to English.
According to David Bruce MacDonald, Dadrian is a "towering figure in the field of Armenian genocide history". Taner Akcam writes that by employing Justin McCarthy's own method of calculating population figures and classifying individuals, Vahakn Dadrian has shown the ridiculousness of the claim that "the events of 1915 were in fact a civil war between the Armenians and Turks". German Swiss scholar Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that the documents related to fifteen Turkish ministers published by V. Dadrian show best the ministers' conception of their responsibility in the "abuses" committed against Ottoman Armenians.

Criticism

One of the main critics of Dadrian is Guenter Lewy, who is criticized for the denial of Armenian Genocide by many scholars. In a response to critics equating Lewy's position on the Armenian genocide "with that of the Holocaust-denier David Irving", he accuses Dadrian of being "guilty of willful mistranslations, selective quotations, and other serious violations of scholarly ethics." In his book, Lewy mentions, among others, Dadrian's defense of the authenticity of the book published by Mevlanzade Rifat, and of the "Ten Commandments", Dadrian's allegations against Turkish sociologist Ziya Gökalp, the use of Jean Naslian's Memoirs praising of Turkish court-martial of 1919–1920, and misleading references to writings of Esref Kuscubasi Bey and German General Felix Guse.
Similarly, Malcolm E. Yapp, professor emeritus at London University, estimates that Dadrian's method "is not that of an historian trying to find out what happened and why but that of a lawyer assembling the case for the prosecution in an adversarial system".
Mary Schaeffer Conroy, professor of Russian history at Colorado University, Denver, and Hilmar Kaiser criticize Dadrian's inaccuracies and selective use of sources. Ara Sarafian also criticises the "Holocaust model" of the Armenian Genocide.
Donald Bloxham expresses a similar view: the accusations leveled by Dadrian "are often simply unfounded"; especially, "the idea of a German role in the formation of genocidal policy... has no basis in the available documentation"; and if Dadrian supports the authenticity of the so-called "Ten Commandments", on the other hand, "Most serious historians accept that this document is dubious at best, and probably a fake. It was the subject of controversy some twenty years before Dadrian rediscovered it for publication in 1993. The document's donor originally offered it for sale to the British authorities in February 1919, a time when numerous fraudulent documents were in circulation. Reference to this supposed 'smoking gun' is tellingly absent in the best recent scholarship on the development of the genocide by the likes of Hans-Lukas Kieser, Hilmar Kaiser, Taner Akcam, Halil Berktay and Ronald Suny." However, as writes Meredith Hindley in a review, Dadrian does not accuse Germany of instigating the Armenian genocide; he argues instead that Germany contributed to the genocide through policies that condoned it and that the German government sanctioned German and Turkish officials who participated in the genocide's implementation".
Another kind of critique is based on the absence of reference, in Dadrian's publications, to the Russian policy vis-à-vis the Armenians during the First World War. Sean McMeekin argued that "it is far more distortion of the truth to tell the story of the Armenian tragedy of 1915 without reference to Russia. It is akin to writing about, say, 'the bloodbath in Budapest' during the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution of 1956 without reference to the Soviet Union." McMeekin gives Dadrian as an example of this "distortion of the truth."

Awards

Awards granted to Vahakn Dadrian include: