Mr. Lifton says he was shocked when he discovered that an American academic had drafted the Ambassador's letter. He was further shocked when he learned that the same scholar had been named to a chair at Princeton University that the Turkish government had helped to endow. The scholar who drafted the Ambassador's letter to Mr. Lifton is Heath W. Lowry, who now holds the Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies at Princeton, where he is chairman of the Near Eastern Studies Department. Mr. Lowry, through a Princeton spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed for this article. There is a need for a better understanding of Turkey.
Turkish officials say they routinely hire American scholars as consultants.
They follow the publications and articles. Mr. Lowry no longer serves as a consultant to the embassy, he said. The critics say they are circulating their petition now because the Turkish government is in the process of helping to endow three more professorships. The institutions must match that amount to receive the contribution. Officials at all three say efforts to raise matching funds have begun.