In their petition and in interviews, members of the group say the Turkish government hires U.S. academics as consultants to advise Turkish officials on how to respond to articles and books that implicate Ottoman Turks in the mass killing of Armenians in the early part of this century, and to help them rebut allegations of genocide. The critics say Turkey, to promote its views, also tries to influence appointments to endowed professorships in Turkish studies that it is helping to establish at major universities in the United States.
Turkish officials deny any impropriety.
The measure was passed in 1987, in an effort to monitor potential foreign influence on American higher education, after large foreign donations sparked controversies at several universities. A revised version of the disclosure law was passed in 1992. Many of the more than 80 scholars and writers who signed the petition had written about the Armenian genocide, and some had received letters from the Turkish Ambassador challenging their work. Jay Lifton, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and John Jay College. Still, he says, he was surprised to receive a letter in 1990 from Turkey's Ambassador to the United States, Nuzhet Kandemir, denying the Armenian genocide.