Introduction

This introduction provides a valuable overview of the life and accomplishments of Taner Akçam, a Turkish-American historian and sociologist. An international authority on the Armenian Genocide and a leader in human rights, Akçam is the first scholar of Turkish origin to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and to publish groundbreaking research on this topic. Imprisoned in 1976 for criticizing injustices in Turkey and the government’s treatment of minorities, especially the Kurds, Akçam escaped and fled to Germany. Amnesty International adopted him as a “prisoner of conscience” and the German government granted him asylum. He eventually obtained citizenship in Germany, where he established his reputation as a genocide scholar and an authority on the history of political violence and torture in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. In fall 2008, Akçam joined Clark University as the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Professor in Armenian Genocide Studies. While at Clark, he advanced the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies as the leading academic institute focused on research and education about the Armenian Genocide. In addition to pursuing his own remarkable scholarship, he has been committed to training doctoral students in order to ensure that scholarship about the Armenian Genocide continues as a subject of serious inquiry.