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I'm not "suppressing" any info. The text you added is POV. A professor from UCLA distinguished by whom? If I add text written by "distinguished" Azerbaijani professors, would that work for you too? Being ethnically Armenian, living in densely Armenian populated region of US and writing pro-Armenian books? I'd say that makes the text POV. Tuscumbia (talk) 20:53, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
What absurd questions. Being an ethnic Armenian does not necessarily prevent someone from producing excellent works of scholarship, any less than being Jewish prevents someone from producing brilliant works on the Holocaust or being African-American to produce enlightening works on race relations in the US. Falsely alleging POV is a cheap way to discredit someone. It's a stinky argument and one which has been vainly used by the Azerbaijanis time and time again. If you are honestly that unwilling to think that a professor who received his accreditation as a scholar from well-known universities in the United States, who has been teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles for more than fifty years, who has been honored by many for his studies, and who adheres to Western standards of scholarship, go ahead and ask an administrator for their opinion. Hovannisian's biography and his achievements can be found right here. As for Azerbaijani scholars: they have demonstrated a poor display of adhering to any standards of scholarship. When scholarly hacks like Ziya Bunyadov, Igrar Aliyev and Farida Mamedova are held by Azerbaijanis to be the gold standard that they should achieve to, then it really is no wonder why everyone stays clear away from them. None of your arguments, nor your analogies, hold water, so I advise you refrain from making such frivolous complaints.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 21:09, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
First of all, watch your language. Nobody is academically inferior to you. Your problem is that you choose to hold Armenian authors much higher than the Azeri ones, which is understandable - you're an Armenian. To think that Hovannisian adheres to Western standards, hence should be regarded as scholarly as you want him to be is simply wrong. If an author lives in the United States, what else can he do to see any progress in his academic career? Not follow the Western standards? And if an author was born and has lived in a densely Armenian populated area (more than 800,000 Armenian-Americans) throughout his life, what else would you expect? Unlike Hovannisian, Bunyadov and Mamedova lived in USSR and were contained by the Soviet regime. Their works and research have not seen that much exposure as that of Hovannisian. They are held to gold standards because they had proven Karabakh was in Caucasian Albania and was ruled by Albanian rulers. So, preach elsewhere. Tuscumbia (talk) 21:34, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I will ask you only once to remain civil and refrain from casting further false aspersions upon my character. You have invoked my Armenian heritage as a personal handicap and are now in danger of turning this talk page into an ethnic battleground - which is strictly forbidden here. I am not claiming to be an academic but I am asserting that Hovannisian is a perfectly reliable source and nothing in his work, which has been published by a third-party (University of California Press) seems to suggest that his scholarship is anything less than stellar. The emphasis in his studies was on European and Russian Studies and the entire focus of his research for the past sixty years has been on the modern history of the Caucasus, which makes him a perfectly acceptable source here, your complaints notwithstanding. Whether or not he grew up in an Armenian environment is irrelevant here: he is a widely respected scholar with an enormous reputation and to think that his ethnic make-up prevents him from being reliable as a historian is a disingenous and unacceptable argument.
The problem with Bunyadov and his ilk is that they have been roundly criticized by all historians, Armenian and non-Armenian alike (especially Robert Hewsen), for academic dishonesty. Bunyadov systematically removed the words "Armenia" and "Armenian" from ancient primary sources plagiarized articles and tried to pass them off as his own, while his disciples went further by deliberately misreading the sources so that they could fit in with their own ideology (their distortion of the Hasan-Jalalyan family's roots is a case in point). It is precisely for this reason that that scholars today look down upon them. Living within the confines of the Soviet Union is not a legitimate argument (if anything, the quality of such works post-independence has only led to a deterioration in quality), since many Armenian historians, such as Aram Ter-Ghevondyan, Hrach Bartikyan, Karen Yuzbashyan, Levon Chookaszian, Suren Yeremyan, were able to achieve renown, submit articles to Western peer-reviewed journals, and attend international conferences due to their talent, not by intentionally distorting material.
You have clearly expressed your disapproval of Hovannisian without actually elaborating on what it is you are actually troubled about. If you want to challenge him, it is incumbent upon you to present evidence on why he should be not be considered a reliable source in the first place. Reading the criteria on the Misplaced Pages:Disputed statement page, it is clear that neither Hovannisian nor his book meet any of the points which would lead someone to dismiss him as a reliable source. (I have no problem with adding Thomson's name, but this remains the main bone of contention). --Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 22:21, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Excuse you, but it is me who needs to remind you to remain civil. Any time you start a paragraph, you go on to discredit not only the sources editors have used but also the editors themselves insulting them with words like "absurd", "cheap", etc. It is you who uses a cheap argument presenting an ethnic Armenian writer, evidently a Turkophobe and someone who had written his books with a sip of bias based on grandmother stories. So, your comments are inappropriate. And for your much needed information, I did not and do not invoke anyone's heritage, including that of yours. I've been in Armenia a number of times and I respect the Armenians as people. I do stand by my words that being an Armenian you're biased and selective in your sources; otherwise you would have added information about continuous terror inflicted on Azerbaijani population of Karabakh by Dro and Andranik and at least try to make the article neutral. It doesn't matter how long emphasis of his studies was on European and Russian studies. He might be biased for sixty years for that matter. Other books sourcing this page do not contain the description of what happened and what Sultanov did or not do as claimed by Hovannisian. So, that makes me a little suspicious about his intent as a writer. Seems like he used the same sources they used but went an extra mile by adding text based on Armenian propoganda. And I should remind you again that I'm not deleting any of your text but marking it with a tag (it does fall into criteria) while we are discussing it. So show some respect to other editors. Tuscumbia (talk) 16:30, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
