THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Several U.S. scholars and writers have organized a petition drive to denounce what they say are efforts by the Turkish government to "manipulate" American universities and encourage "fraudulent scholarship."

In their petition and in interviews, members of the group say the Turkish government hires U.S. academics as consultants to advise Turkish officials on how to respond to articles and books that implicate Ottoman Turks in the mass killing of Armenians in the early part of this century, and to help them rebut allegations of genocide.

The critics say Turkey, to promote its views, also tries to influence appointments to endowed professorships in Turkish studies that it is helping to establish at major universities in the United States. Turkish officials deny any impropriety.

Federal law requires American institutions to report to the Department of Education foreign gifts and contracts valued at more than $250,000. The measure was passed in 1987, in an effort to monitor potential foreign influence on American higher education, after large foreign donations sparked controversies at several universities. A revised version of the disclosure law was passed in 1992.

Many of the more than 80 scholars and writers who signed the petition had written about the Armenian genocide, and some had received letters from the Turkish Ambassador challenging their work.

The petition has its roots in the experiences of one scholar in particular --Robert Jay Lifton, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and John Jay College.

Mr. Lifton said he expected some people to disagree with his 1986 book, "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide," in which he treats the Armenian genocide as historical fact. Still, he says, he was surprised to receive a letter in 1990 from Turkey's Ambassador to the United States, Nuzhet Kandemir, denying the Armenian genocide. The Ambassador said the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians --the number itself is also a matter of dispute-- were really the result of "a tragic civil war initiated by Armenian nationalists."

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. "We feel strongly that there's been a violation of academic standards," he said.

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.

At the time he drafted the letter to Mr. Lifton for the Turkish Ambassador, Mr. Lowry was executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies in Washington. It was established by the Turkish government in 1983 "to facilitate greater knowledge of Turkey," said Aykut Sezgin, a counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. "There is a need for a better understanding of Turkey."

Turkish officials say they routinely hire American scholars as consultants. "We seek advise from academicians," said Rafet Akgunay, another official at the embassy. "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. As they did at Princeton, Turkey is giving $750,000 each to Georgetown and Harvard Universities and the University of Chicago. The institutions must match that amount to receive the contribution. Officials at all three say efforts to raise matching funds have begun.

The critics say they fear that Turkey will try to influence who is selected to fill those new chairs, as they allege it did at Princeton.

The professorships "are a reward for past services, " said Roger W. Smith, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary. With Mr. Lifton and Eric Markusen, a professor of sociology at Southwest State University in Minnesota, Mr. Smith wrote an article, "Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide," that appeared in the Spring 1995 issue of "Holocaust and Genocide Studies." It focused primarily on Mr. Lowry, who did not respond to the article.

Turkish officials deny that they try to influence any of the selection processes. "We don't recommend anybody, " said Mr. Sezgin of the Turkish Embassy. "We don't interfere. It's up to them."

Mr. Lowry was selected for the Princeton chair from about 20 candidates drawn from a national search, said Abraham Udovitch, a professor in the Near Eastern studies department who served on the search committee.

"He is someone who is very able. He is a leading expert in Turkish studies and a master of Turkish. The issue for Princeton was, Is he a historian and scholar? And he is."

Mr. Udovitch stressed the "integrity" of the search. "There were no restrictions. There was no influence. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't have the facts."

The critics cite copies of a memo and a draft letter from Mr. Lowry to the Ambassador regarding how to respond to Mr. Lifton's book on genocide. Those two documents were inadvertently enclosed with the letter the Ambassador sent to Mr. Lifton.

The critics believe that this material alone should be enough to raise concern among academics, particularly those at Princeton. "Heath Lowry is simply unqualified [for the chair] because of the people to whom he is beholden," said Marjorie H. Dobkins, a professor at Barnard College who signed the petition.

Mr. Udovitch said Mr. Lowry's work in advising Turkish officials "wasn't part of his dossier." Part of academic freedom, however, "is that people have their own political views," he added. "They're free to consult with whomever they want."

Mr. Lifton and other critics say that Mr. Lowry has used his own expertise as a historian and a scholar to advance Turkey's controversial stance on the Armenian genocide.

The petition does not call for Mr. Lowry's ouster from Princeton. Organizers of the campaign say its purpose is simply to "expose" how the Turkish government denies Armenian genocide by using American academics. "This has to be confronted," said Peter Balakian, a professor of English at Colgate University and the leader of the petition drive.

Among those who have signed the petition are Robert N. Bellah, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University; Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University; and the writers Seamus Heaney, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, and William Styron.

Mr. Balakian said he hoped to have the document published in leading U.S. periodicals.