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Genocide Scholar Roger Smith donates personal library to the Armenian Genocide Museum of America
14.10.2009 17:40
Dr. Roger W. Smith, professor emeritus of government at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a co-founder and past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has donated his personal library of books on the subject of genocide to the Armenian Genocide Museum of America (AGMA).
In making this gift, Dr. Smith shared the following thoughts: "I had long been involved with various Armenian scholarly organizations, had given talks about the Genocide, and especially denial, to many Armenian community groups, but I had also been deeply committed to educating a new generation of scholars who could carry on the work begun by some of us twenty-five years ago. I offered my collection of books to the Armenian Genocide Museum of America to provide materials that could help educate scholars and policy makers about the Genocide, but also as a kind of fulfillment, and continuation, of my association with a people whose cause I had come to care about deeply."
Trustee of the museum and chairman of its building and operations committee Van Z. Krikorian welcomed the gift as a valuable addition to the resources being assembled to create a state-of-the-art museum facility in the nation's capital.
"As an educator and as a human rights advocate, Dr. Smith has selflessly dedicated his time to speak on the Armenian Genocide at international conferences, in lecture halls and in the classroom," Krikorian said. "In 2000 he was invited by the House International Affairs Committee to testify in Congress about the Armenian Genocide resolution then under consideration, and all Armenians owe him our gratitude for that and so much more. Along with Robert Jay Lifton, Erik Markusen, Vahakn Dadrian, Richard Hovannisian, Helen Fein, Robert Melson, Israel Charny and many others, Roger Smith has been a true pioneer in bringing the problem of genocide, and the consequences of denial, to the attention of policymakers. His choice of the Armenian Genocide Museum of America as the repository of his library testifies to his continuing commitment to encourage new generations to study, analyze, and solve the problem of genocide through prevention and tolerance. This library complements our specialized holdings on the Armenian Genocide and equips the museum with hard to find resources. We are so very grateful to him for his generosity and express our deep appreciation for his strong support."
In 1995, along with Robert Jay Lifton and the late Erik Markusen, Roger Smith published a critical exposé of the Turkish Embassy's and the Institute of Turkish Studies' campaign of denying the Armenian Genocide in the groundbreaking article "Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide," which appeared in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies issued by Oxford University Press and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Dr. Smith, who has written extensively on the problem of denial, is the editor and co-author of Guilt: Man and Society and editor of Genocide: Essays Toward Understanding, Early Warning, and Prevention, a selective compilation of the presentations from the first biennial meeting of IAGS at the College of William and Mary.
An educator par excellence who recently retired after a lifetime of teaching, Dr. Smith continues as a leader in the field of human rights and genocide education. He has served as the director of the Genocide and Human Rights University Program since 2002. This is an intensive summer studies program created by the Zoryan Institute based out of the University of Toronto. Thanks to Dr. Smith, the two-week seminar has hosted over the years dozens of specialists on the Armenian, Cambodian, and Rwandan Genocides, the Holocaust, and other crimes against humanity, and trained hundreds of students to identify the early warning signs of genocide and the steps that can be taken toward its prevention.
Dr. Smith has been the chairman of the Zoryan Institute's Academic Board of Directors since 2004. He also served on the Armenian National Institute's Academic Council, and in 2008 he was awarded by the president of Armenia with the Movses Khorenatsi medal "for his considerable contribution to the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide."
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