Going against the Obama administration, “a U.S. congressional committee approved a resolution condemning the 1915 slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Turkey’s foreign minister warned that such a vote would “damage ties with the Obama administration and set back reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia,” The New York Times writes, and Turkey quickly recalled its ambassador to Washington. As stated in The New York Times article, “historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died amid the chaos and unrest surrounding World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies, however, that this was a planned genocide, and mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign against the resolution.” Though President Obama made a campaign pledge in January 2008 that “ ‘as president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,’ ” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman before the vote and “ ‘indicated that further congressional action could impede progress on normalization of relations’ between Turkey and Armenia.” According to The New York Times, “the Obama administration had urged the committee to forgo a vote altogether,” for, as The BBC states, the Obama administration was well aware that “the non-binding resolution would harm talks between Turkey and Armenia,” and, as The Wall Street Journal writes, it could also “damage U.S. relations with Turkey, a vital ally in the Middle East and Central Asia.” The resolution was approved on a 23-22 vote.
Facing Today
Facing Today helps educators connect the study of history to issues in our world today. We select current websites, articles, films and blogs that reflect universal themes, such as identity, membership and participation, represented in our scope and sequence. Each media resource is linked to related Facing History materials, including study guides, videos and lessons.
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March 5, 2010
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March 3, 2010
German film director Veit Harlan wrote and directed “Jew Süss,” a 1940 box office success in Nazi Germany that, according to a New York Times article by Larry Rohter, is “perhaps the most notoriously anti-Semitic movie ever made.” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis writes that the film, which opens in 1733, “tells the story of a Jewish money lender from the ghetto, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian), who rises to power in Wurttemberg (in what is southwestern Germany), where he gains control of the court, taxes the population, rapes a young married woman (who then drowns herself) and is finally executed.” Rohter notes that the film was “so effective that it was made required viewing for all members of the SS,” and to this day its “commercial exhibition or sale as a DVD is still prohibited in Germany and several other European countries.” German film director Felix Moeller has released a documentary titled “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss.” According to Dargis, the film is “an exploration of the filmmaker, his career under National Socialism and the children and other relatives who bear his name and, with varying difficulty, his legacy.”
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March 2, 2010
On February 15th, 2010, University of California San Diego (UCSD) fraternity students threw a “ghetto-themed” party called the “Compton Cookout.” NBC Los Angeles reports that the party was meant “to mock Black History Month” and the invitation encouraged participants to “wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly.” The Detroit Free Press adds that partygoers were promised “chicken, watermelon and malt liquor.” Students and community leaders in Los Angeles responded, protesting and condemning the event. The editor in chief of the campus’ humor publication “appeared on UCSD’s Student Run Television station on Feb. 18 and called protesters of the controversial party ‘ungrateful niggers,’ ” the Daily Nexus writes. Then, on the evening of February 25th, a noose was found in the main library, hanging from a bookcase and facing a window. The Associated Press reports that the student who hung the noose in the library turned herself in to police. She has been suspended and “is under investigation by campus police for a possible hate crime;” NBC San Diego adds that she could face charges of “hanging a noose with intent to terrorize.” The Black Student Union (BSU) Chapter at UCSD “declared the campus climate to be in a ‘state of emergency,’ the Daily Nexus writes. According to NBC Los Angeles, “black students comprise less than 2 percent of the university’s undergraduates.” Hundreds of students joined a protest on February 26th, both chanting outside the chancellor’s office, and sitting silently in a group “wearing black and listening to fellow students who said that they are tired and hurt after nearly two weeks of racially-charged events,” NBC San Diego reports.
