The 2020 Nagorno Karabakh War: Actors, Antecedents, and Aftermath

The annual Atrocity Studies lecture  hosted by the minor in Atrocity Studies and the Practices of Social Justice, supported by Lauri ’77 and Jeffrey Zell ’77.

This illustrated lecture maps the trajectory and humanitarian toll of the 2020 war in Nagorno Karabakh, and explores its historical and geopolitical contexts. Outlining the antecedents of the conflict from WWI to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lecture identifies pogroms, propaganda campaigns, and policy decisions that cast a shadow across generations in the South Caucasus. Unpacking domestic developments within post-Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan and their impact on the negotiations between the two countries, the lecture tracks the process that led to unsettling a “frozen conflict,” and the role played by regional actors, chief among them Turkey, in detonating it in the middle of a raging pandemic.

Khatchig Mouradian is a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. He is the author of The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918. Mouradian has published articles on concentration camps, unarmed resistance, the aftermath of mass violence, midwifery in the Middle East, and approaches to teaching history. He is the co-editor of a forthcoming book on late-Ottoman history, and the editor of the peer-reviewed journal The Armenian Review. Mouradian has taught at Worcester State University, Clark University, Stockton University, Rutgers University, and California State University – Fresno.

Free and open to the public. Open captioning will be provided. Registration link forthcoming.

Co-sponsorship support from: Syracuse University Humanities Center, Citizenship and Civic Engagement Program, College of Law Office of International Programs, College of Law Journal of Global Rights & Organizations and Impunity Watch News, History Department, The Institute for Security Policy and Law, International Relations Program, Jewish Studies Program, Lender Center for Social Justice, Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs Central Asia and the Caucasus Research Group, Department of Political Science, School of Education, and the Social Sciences Ph.D. Program.