Anthropology & Sociology

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  • TURKISH / ARMENIAN / AMERICAN discourse GROUP & Educational TRAVEL in LOS ANGELES area universities!  We would like to add your book to our reading list :)

    Barev-Merhaba-Hello!
    Your book & interview on Al-Jazeera was very inspiring!! Please **join or spread the word** about our related group of Professors, Students, Alumni & Community Members from Turkish, Armenian & American backgrounds! We started 1.5 years ago at the University of California, Irvine, with students, alumni & community members - some of whom had never before talked to the ''other'' - and ended with an amazing journey very reminiscent of your wonderful book :)

    ALL narratives are welcome & scholarly articles/oral history accounts are discussed on a weekly basis (suggestions welcome!), culminating in an educational journey to BOTH countries (funded by individual donations only, and bake sales if needed)!

    We **just came back** from talking 1:1 with nearly 40 high-level speakers (Politicians, historians, artists, architects, film makers, business people, journalists, every-day people, students etc.) in Turkey and Armenia (4 cities over an 8 day Spring Break!) & are doing panel discussions about our trip & process now (we had 100 people come to our first event!)! Interested in hearing our panel of speakers or starting your own chapter through your local college or university? Please contact: info [at] olivetreeinitiative.org! Thank you!

    Could we please talk with you on our next trip (2013)? Also, do you have any suggestions for who we talk to next time around? Our full itinerary of who we talked with (on an informal, non recorded basis) is here for your reference:  http://www.olivetreeinitiative.org/the-trip/turkey-armenia-curriculum-2012/.
     
    Sincerely,
    -Aysha Ruya Cohen , UC Irvine ''Olive Tree Initiative'', Founding Member 
    (Follow us on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/olivetreeinit)

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  • Jews and genes

    Several critics of Shlomo Sand’s book have seized on recent scientific studies that supposedly proved "that Jewish communities in places as far afield as Europe and the Caucasus are genetically linked, and that their DNA ancestry traces back to the Middle East" and thus that "demonstrate conclusively that the theories propounded by Sand and others ring visibly and unmistakably hollow". Sand himself, in the postface to the paperback edition of his book, argues that: "After exhausting all the historical arguments, several critics have seized on genetics. The same people who maintain that the Zionists never referred to a race conclude their argument by evoking a common Jewish gene. Their thinking can be summed up as follows: ‘We are not a pure race, but we are a race just the same.’ ... As of today, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study ever will." Is Shlomo Sand’s argument—especially where it concerns the role of conversion in the spread of Judaism—vulnerable to objections based on genetic science?

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