Ron Suny will speak about the controversies over whether the deportations and massacres of Armenians and Assyrians in the late Ottoman Empire constitute a genocide by the Young Turk government. Reviewing the massive documentation of the events, and the recent findings of scholars on the subject, Suny considers the conflicting narratives on 1915 and develops his own analysis of why a government turned to a policy of eliminating several of its subject peoples.

Ron Suny is Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago.