Academic Denial of the Armenian Genocide in American Scholarship: Denialism as Manufactured Controversy

From its origins in the World War I era, denial of the Armenian Genocide emerged in American universities during the Cold War. Today, a growing body of critical scholarship and documentation of the Armenian Genocide has rendered traditional strategies of silencing and denial increasingly untenable. Like the tobacco industry lobbyists of the 1950s, apologists for the “Turkish position” now labor to construct denialism as a legitimate intellectual position within a historical debate. Such manufactured controversy is a time-tested means of lending academic credibility to Armenian Genocide deniers, whose contemporary brethren include the so-called skeptics of global warming. This article will trace, briefly, the early development of Armenian Genocide denial and will focus on more recent refinements and the penetration of denial into American academia. Concluding comments will address the fundamental challenge of denialism, debate, and the quest for intellectual integrity.