Forthcoming Review on the
Armenian Genocide

Viktoria Hertling joining students during their picnic in the countryside near Yerevan, Armenia.

The new book The History of the Armenian Genocide by the preeminent and internationally acclaimed scholar Vahakn N. Dadrian deals with the issues of ethnic conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia and to the Caucasus. Vahakn Dadrian received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and currently teaches Sociology at the State University of New York in Geneso. He is the director of a large genocide study project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation.

I got to know Professor Dadrian more than two years ago at an international conference of scholars in commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan, Armenia. At the time, there was a lively and engaging debate between the ‘nestors’ of genocide studies, Jehuda Bauer from Jerusalem on the one side and Vahakn Dadrian on the other. During a talk at the conference site, Professor Dadrian told me that the Armenian Genocide, though not given the prominent treatment as the Jewish Holocaust which it precedes, still haunts the Western world. In view of the "ethnic cleaning" in Bosnia, a study of the Armenian Genocide will offer new insights into the mechanisms that make genocide possible in the modern world.

The study contains the results of more than 20 years of research and analysis. Given his previous publications and his authority as a scholar, Vahakn Adrian’s book will no doubt become a definitive work on this subject. The book is going to be reviewed for the next issue of CenterNews.

Viktoria Hertling