Donald George Quataert (September 10, 1941 – February 10, 2011) was a historian at
Binghamton University
The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university in Binghamton metropolitan area, Greater Binghamton, New York, United States. It is one of the four uni ...
. He taught courses on Middle East/Ottoman history, with an interest in labor, social and economics, during the early and modern periods. He also provided training in the reading of Ottoman archival sources.
He received his undergraduate degree from Boston University in 1966 (Phi Beta Kappa), and then his Masters from Harvard in 1968. Subsequently, he received his doctorate from UCLA in 1973.
In 2006, he published an article reviewing
Donald Bloxham's book ''
The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians''. In his review, Quataert stated that he used the word ''genocide'' because "to do otherwise... runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities" and that "accumulating evidence is indicating that the killings were centrally planned by Ottoman government officials and systematically carried out by their underlings". The review article challenged what Quataert termed "the Ottomanist wall of silence"
on the issue.
Weeks later, Quataert resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which he had held since 2001. Quataert stated that he was forced to resign due to the pressure of the Turkish ambassador
Nabi Şensoy, and a number of other board members resigned shortly thereafter.
Mervat Hatem, the director of
Middle East Studies Association, sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey
Erdogan, criticizing the threats of Turkish officials to stop funding the Institute if Quataert did not retract his statements. Hatem stated that such threats went against
academic freedom
Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism.
Academic ...
and that "the resignations are in contradiction with those many requests to leave the discussion and the assessment of the Armenian Genocide to the academia that Turkey has been making."
[''Susan Kinzie''. Board Members Resign to Protest Chair's Ousting. The Washington Post. 5 July 2008]
Books
* ''The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922'', Cambridge University Press, 2000.
* ''Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution'', Cambridge University Press, 2002.
* ''Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822-1920'', Berghahn Books, 2006.
See also
*
Armenian genocide denial
References
1941 births
2011 deaths
Scholars of Ottoman history
Binghamton University faculty
American people of Dutch descent
Boston University alumni
Harvard University alumni
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
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