AMHRC & MHRMI Report Support from Academic World for their Response to Prof. Miller
Melbourne, Australia and Toronto, Canada, June 16, 2009 - The AMHRC and MHRMI wish to report that we have sent our response to all of Professor Miller's co-signatories. We have also sent it to a number of other academics working in this field. One of these other academics was Professor of Ancient History, Daniel Tompkins of Temple University in Philadelphia. He responded as follows (note the sentence explaining that many academics have refused to sign Professor Miller's letter):
To the Committee:
I am in your debt for a letter that is informative, well argued, and interesting! I shall save it and may refer to it.
Of course you may circulate my comments as desired. Some websites
have already picked them up, and I send my letter to MINA,
incurring
some angry letters from people who disagreed. I have to say that
these are outweighed in number and quality by the positive responses.
Let me say that I'm regularly updating the underlying document as I
learn more.
Below is a letter I sent to British classicists that you might want to
use, which mentions a debate now underway at the archaeoastronomy
blog. It got a very good set of responses from very qualified
professionals. Please note the second sentence: this really is a
principled position of mine, stated also in the underlying letter. I
would not want the underlying letter (at astro.temple.etc) changed,
but I leave it to you, knowledgeable of your audience, to decide how
much emphasis to give it.
Best wishes,
Dan
__________________
June 13
To:
CLASSICISTS@liverpool.ac.uk
I have followed the evolution of Professor Stephen Miller's letter to
President Obama since March. While there is good reason to deplore
any nation's appropriation of Alexander the Great for nationalistic
purposes,
the letter goes beyond that scholarly position to involve
the author and co-signers on one side in an ongoing interstate dispute
in the Balkans, and it seemed necessary to respond. I have done so:
http://astro.temple.edu/~pericles/Letter.htm
with additional comments on Alun Salt's Archaeoastronomy website:
http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/2 ... ment-39246
At this point in the discussion, let me repeat that
the most
important mail I’ve received in the past two weeks comes not from
professors but victims, or better, grandchildren of victims who were
killed or tortured on both sides, equally horribly, in the 1940-1949
period.
These sad posts illustrate the long shelf life ot torture.
The pain of a tortured relative is transmitted through generations and
remains alive today, damaging all efforts at analysis and
argumentation. Resolving the problems posed by this set of memories,
deeply imbedded north and south of the border, strikes me as a major
challenge for all parties. I would like to see the dispute resolved
without further pain.
In addition to criticisms -- some of which I've used in revising --
I've received a batch of positive communications since posting my
letter, most notably from fine scholars in our field who refused to
sign Prof. Miller's letter, but also from some who work on modern
Greek history. In many ways, the best antidote to this letter would
be a subscription to the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, published by
the Modern Greek Studies Association in the USA.
The Journal has
published a number of serious critiques by Greek, British and American
scholars of the extreme nationalist policy Prof. Miller advocates:
one of the pities of the exercise is that the author and co-signers
show no cognizance of these. (Nor do they show awareness of the
impressive studies of ethnic development by scholars in our own field
and in modern Greek studies.)
I'm interested in hearing from members of this list, if anyone wants
to write.
Very truly yours,
Dan Tompkins
Temple University
pericles@temple.edu
Нека се освестат луѓето а не да бидат искористувани од циганите
