Friday, April 23, 2010
On April 24, 1915, the Ottomans arrested approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, marking what many scholars call the start of the Armenian Genocide. Ninety-five years later, the g-word is still taboo in Turkey and as recently as two years ago, a journalist was fatally shot in Istanbul for talking about it. Taner Akcam is a Turkish scholar at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Rouben Adalian is the Director of the Armenian National Institute. They’ll discuss the archival evidence of what happened, a recent conference they hosted of Turkish and Armenian historians, and how the two nations might be able to move forward. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of writer, director and actor Peter Ustinov. He had a career spanning 60 years on stage and screen. He won two Academy Awards for best supporting actor, as well as three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award for best children’s recording. Ustinov also served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF for many years.