A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit against the University of Minnesota over the website of one of its centers -- and the right of that center to deem another website “unreliable.”
At one level the suit focused on history and the dispute over why so many Armenians were killed during World War I. But more broadly, the case involved two competing claims of academic freedom.
The website of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies makes clear that its faculty members believe (consistent with the consensus view of historians) that what happened to the Armenians was a genocide. Many Turkish groups disagree, and the suit was sparked by the university’s labeling of the information on the Turkish Coalition of America’s website as “unreliable.” The group sued, arguing that the label amounted to an unfair endorsement by the university of a specific position -- and that doing so discouraged students and faculty members from asserting other points of view, in violation of the principles of academic freedom.
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