Tuesday, September 20, 2005

The controversial Dr. Akiner

Shirin Akiner was my supervisor for my MA at SOAS. I took her class on Central Asia in 2001-2002. Although I do not agree with her on everything I do think she is a first class scholar and honest person. I am a historian and I think it takes about fifty years to get enough perspective to truly try and understand events. So I am not going to comment on either her 13 May 2005 report on the massacre in Andijan or the coverage of her 14 September 2005 talk in DC. I will just note that I think speculation regarding her integrity is beyond the pale. Nathan Hamm's Registan website has a pretty detailed discussion on both Dr. Akiner's report and recent talk.

1 comment:

J. Otto Pohl said...

Nathan, I certainly was not referring to you regarding aspersions on Shirin Akiner's honesty. But, some of the commentors have come close to attacking her character. I think that is going beyond legitimate criticism. At anyrate it is a good debate and made me think again about her report.