Pashinian admitted on Thursday forcing Edita Gzoyan to step down because of what she told and gave U.S. President JD Vance during his February 10 visit to the genocide memorial in Armenia’s capital, which is part of the AGMI. Gzoyan presented Vance with books about the 1915 genocide in Ottoman Turkey and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
“Dr. Gzoyan’s forced exit sends a chilling message to academics and historians everywhere: that rigorous inquiry and truthful remembrance can be displaced for diplomatic comfort,” read a joint statement issued by the genocide scholars later on Thursday.
“We firmly demand that Dr. Gzoyan be reinstated immediately and allowed to continue the outstanding work she has been leading,” it said.
The signatories, most of them ethnic Armenian scholars teaching at U.S. and European universities, warned that failure to do so would “seriously jeopardize the Institute’s future and undermine its standing within the international scholarly community.” They described Gzoyan as “one of the most outstanding and dedicated directors in the history of the Institute.”
“She has been a tireless advocate for rigorous historical research on the Armenian Genocide and related atrocities against Armenians -- work that has strengthened global understanding of past injustices and supported the cause of historical truth,” added the statement.
Pashinian said he was right to effectively fire Gzoyan because the AGMI director’s “provocative action” ran counter to his policy towards Azerbaijan and Turkey. Armenian opposition leaders as well as many public figures rejected that explanation, saying that the prime minister is openly violating academic freedom in the country. The international scholars likewise saw a “silencing of independent academic voices in favor of political convenience.”
“There is every reason to believe that this is less about museum administration and more about repositioning the AGMI to align its work with geopolitical priorities -- especially a desire to avoid honest discussion of atrocities related to Azerbaijan amid ongoing normalization efforts,” they said.
Armenia - People walk to the Tsitsernakabert memorial in Yerevan during an annual commemoration of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, April 24, 2022.
Gzoyan has still not publicly commented on her resignation which upset the AGMI staff. While the AGMI is subordinate to the Armenian Ministry of Education, Culture and Youth Affairs, its directors are supposed to be appointed by its board of trustees.
The board’s chairman, French-Armenian genocide scholar Raymond Kevorkian, and several members also resigned last week. Pashinian was quick to replace them. He also installed one of his former aides, Hrachya Tashchian, as AGMI’s acting director. The latter officially began performing his duties on Friday.
Tashchian is a former career diplomat who is not known to have major scholarly experience. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday, he denied that Pashinian is exerting pressure on the AGMI and its scholars. But Tashchian also made clear that he will be guided by the prime minister’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile, there were signs of continuing discontent among the AGMI employees. All 74 people working for the institute protested against Gzoyan’s resignation in a joint letter to Pashinian last week. Arman Khachatrian, an AGMI fellow, denounced the premier in a social media post on Friday.
“By punishing Gzoyan, who is not a member of his political team, for an innocent and non-provocative act, the prime minister is … showing that anyone -- be they a scholar, a state official, a sympathizer, an opponent -- who continues to speak on the subject of Artsakh will be severely punished,” wrote Khachatrian.
Pashinian, he said, has no legal authority to censor scholarly activities. Ashot Melikian, the former longtime head of the History Institute of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, echoed the criticism.
“In Soviet times, due to political constraints, many historical events were falsified, bypassed and not talked about, or if they were talked about, they were turned upside down,” Melkonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Now if we are going to be guided by political expediency, it will mean returning to the political constraints of the Soviet era.”