SPLC Apologizes To Lewy, Sparks Questions on Mass. Case

“Like you, we believe that the weight of scholarly opinion supports the conclusion that the murder of Armenians during World War I should be characterized as a genocide,” he wrote. “We said as much in the article we published in 2008, and nothing in our retraction changes our position. We also thought it was appropriate, in light of our error, to make it clear that Professor Lewy acknowledged that the Ottoman Turkish regime bore a degree of responsibility for the murders,” he added. “We hope that others do not confuse our retraction and apology to Professor Lewy as an endorsement of his view on the genocide question.”

George Mason University’s Prof. Gregory Stanton, immediate past-president of IAGS and president of Genocide Watch, said Cohen’s clarification put him at ease.

“[Cohen] reaffirmed the reality of the Armenian Genocide,” Stanton said. “It was very clear to me after reading his response that the Southern Poverty Law Center settled with Lewy so they didn’t get bogged down in endless litigation, when in fact they had made a mistake.”

“I think that was a very reasonable position to take,” he added. “They have much more important legal battles to fight, and I think that was the decision they made.”

Implications for Griswold v. Driscoll?

The settlement has led some observers in the Armenian-American community to wonder about another high-profile Genocide case, which could be moving from Massachusetts to the Supreme Court.

The five-year-old case, brought by two Lincoln-Sudbury High School teachers and a student, with the assistance of Turkish organizations, against the Massachusetts Department of Education’s exclusion of “contra- genocide” materials in an Armenian Genocide curriculum guide, was filed with the US Supreme Court by lead attorney Harvey Silverglate in November.

The plaintiffs in both the Lewy defamation suit and the Griswold case have ties to the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). The ATAA helped fund the Griswold case, while Lewy attorney David Saltzman is the law partner of Gunay Evinch, ATAA president. Silverglate said that while the cases are different, they ultimately share a common thread of those who “departed from the majority view on the Armenian Genocide” facing unjust attacks. “The censorship of the Massachusetts curricular guide and the know-nothing, reckless assault on Lewy’s integrity grow out of the same intolerance on any difference on the Genocide issue,” Silverglate said.

Meanwhile, Silverglate is waiting for word from the Supreme Court on whether the case will be heard.

“If the US Supreme Court takes the case, I think we’ll win,” he said. “But the chances are between 1 and 5 percent. The odds are against us, but the issue is of extreme importance.”

Stanton, who helped write an amicus curiae brief filed by IAGS on behalf of the defense, said the two cases shared little in common other than the genocide.

“The [Griswold] decision was upheld in an opinion written by [former Supreme Court Justice] Souter himself,” Stanton said. “It completely demolished the position of the Turkish lobby that the Mass. Board of Education had a duty to keep denial websites on its list of recommended websites for teachers.

“Souter, I think rightly, said the Mass. Board of Education created their list of sites they recommend and they had every right to edit it and to alter it. This was not a first amendment issue.”