The New York Times - USA (2020-12-01)

THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-EDTUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 N A25

S

INCE its origins in the ninth cen-

tury, Dadivank Monastery has

withstood Seljuk and Mongol in-

vasions, Persian domination, So-

viet rule and, this fall, a second brutal war

between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Now

that majestic stone complex — which in-

cludes two frescoed churches, a bell tower

and numerous medieval inscriptions —

faces something that could be even

worse: a dangerous peace.

Perched on a rugged slope west of Na-

gorno-Karabakh, Dadivank is one of the

hundreds of Armenian churches, monu-

ments and carved memorial stones in that

disputed region that will come under the

control of predominantly Muslim Azerbai-

jan according to a cease-fire agreement

reached in November. Some of those

structures, like the Amaras monastery

and the basilica of Tsitsernavank, date to

the earliest centuries of Christianity.

Armenians are understandably wor-

ried about turning over so much of their

heritage to a sworn enemy. Under the

cease-fire, hundreds of thousands of Azer-

baijanis uprooted in the early 1990s by the

previous Nagorno-Karabakh war will be

able to return to the disputed area. In a

victory speech on Nov. 25, President Il-

ham Aliyev of Azerbaijan suggested that

Armenians have no historical claims to

the region, asserting that the churches be-

longed to ancient Azerbaijani forebears

and had been “Armenianized” in the 19th

century.

From 1997 to 2006, the Azerbaijani gov-

ernment undertook a devastating cam-

paign against Armenian heritage in Na-

khichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave sepa-

rated from the main part of the country by

Armenian territory: Some 89 churches

and the thousands of carved memorial

stones, or khachkars, of the Djulfa ceme-

tery, the largest medieval Armenian cem-

etery in the world, were destroyed. And

since the recent cease-fire, images circu-

lating on social media suggest that some

Armenian monuments and churches in

territory newly in Azerbaijani hands have

already been vandalized or defiled.

For their part, Armenian forces laid to

waste the Azerbaijani town of Agdam in

the 1990s. The Azerbaijani government

has also claimed that mosques and Mus-

lim sites that had been under Armenian

control were neglected or desecrated.

Now, as Azerbaijan takes possession of

newly won territories, a longstanding

problem acquires special urgency: How

can a government be persuaded to care

for the heritage of a people that doesn’t fit

into its view of the nation?

In any instance of intercommunal

strife, preserving monuments must take a

distant second place to saving lives and

protecting human welfare. But the fate of

cultural sites matters, too, for the

prospects of long-term peace.

International efforts to protect monu-

ments have overwhelmingly focused on

acts of war and terrorist violence. Follow-

ing the widespread destruction of muse-

ums, libraries and artworks during World

War II, diplomats drafted the 1954 Hague

Convention for the Protection of Cultural

Property in the Event of Armed Conflict,

which was eventually ratified by more

than 130 countries. But the treaty had a

significant loophole for “military necessi-

ty.”

Since the Cold War, deliberate attacks

on an adversary’s major monuments —

the Croatians’ shelling of the Old Bridge of

Mostar, Bosnia, in 1993; the Taliban’s dy-

namiting of the giant sandstone Buddhas

of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in 2001; the Is-

lamic State’s razing of Yazidi shrines in

Iraq in 2014-15 — have pushed world lead-

ers and international organizations to

give more teeth to the existing legal

framework.

In 2002, the International Criminal

Court was established to prosecute geno-

cide, crimes against humanity and war

crimes — including, in the case of war

crimes, the intentional destruction of cul-

tural heritage. In 2008, following wide-

spread outrage over the looting and dam-

age to sites in Iraq during the American

invasion and occupation, the United

States Senate ratified the 1954 Hague Con-

vention.

More recently, UNESCO, the United

Nations cultural agency, started a high-

profile campaign to counter what Irina

Bokova, a former UNESCO director gen-

eral, called “cultural cleansing” by “vio-

lent extremists.” In 2016 the I.C.C. con-

victed a Malian jihadist of war crimes for

leading attacks on the 14th-century

Djinguereber Mosque and other sites in

Timbuktu, Mali.

That year, several governments called

for the creation of “an international net-

work of safe havens” to protect cultural

property at risk of imminent attack. In

2017, the U.N. Security Council also con-

demned the destruction of cultural sites

by terrorist groups. President Trump’s

threat, in January, to target “important”

cultural sites in Iran prompted an uproar,

as well as pushback from the Pentagon.

Yet some of the most systematic de-

struction in modern times has involved

sovereign governments rather than mili-

tary combatants or extremist groups.

China carried out a sweeping campaign

against Tibetan monasteries, not during

the annexation of Tibet in 1950-51, but

years later, when the region was firmly

under Beijing’s rule. The Turkish govern-

ment has continued to seize or destroy Ar-

menian sites in Eastern Anatolia many

decades after the Armenian genocide.

Since 2012, the Myanmar military has

demolished hundreds of mosques and Is-

lamic schools in Rakhine State, part of its

brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.

Satellite evidence suggests that the Chi-

nese authorities have destroyed 8,500

mosques in Xinjiang in the last three years

alone.

Just a few months ago, India’s Hindu-

nationalist prime minister, Narendra

Modi, laid the cornerstone for a new

Hindu temple on the site of the 16th-cen-

tury Babri Mosque, which was destroyed

by a Hindu mob in 1992. President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has ordered

that two of Istanbul’s most important Byz-

antine churches, Chora and Hagia Sophia,

be converted from museums to mosques,

raising fears that their extraordinary

Christian mosaics might not be cared for.

But in all of these cases, the United Na-

tions, the United States and its European

allies have remained largely mute. UN-

ESCO, which depends on many of the of-

fending governments for funding and sup-

port, has shown little interest in interven-

ing. And alliances and prevailing interna-

tional norms tend to make foreign

governments reluctant to interfere with

the domestic affairs of other nations dur-

ing peacetime.

By contrast, the case of Nagorno-Kara-

bakh, where a hot war has just ended,

could provide a rare opportunity.

In the immediate aftermath of war, pre-

cisely because a peace effort is underway,

foreign governments and international

peacekeepers are unusually well placed to

intervene. Unlike during armed conflict,

there is also a chance for international me-

diators and local communities to work to-

gether to prevent attacks before the dam-

age is done.

The historical treasures in and around

Nagorno-Karabakh need not become cas-

ualties of the recent war — nor drivers of a

next one.

Since antiquity, numerous sites and

monuments have safely passed from the

control of one group to another, often

across confessional lines. The Pantheon in

Rome, one of the greatest pagan temples

of antiquity, owes its remarkable survival

in part to its adoption by the Catholic

Church in the seventh century. After the

fall of Constantinople, Mehmed II the Con-

queror preserved Hagia Sophia as a

mosque. During the Protestant Reforma-

tion, Martin Luther opposed the destruc-

tion of Catholic art in Germany, even as he

sought to stamp out Catholicism.

In these cases, major buildings or art-

works were recognized by their new stew-

ards as having transcendent value, aes-

thetic or otherwise. Prestige helped deter-

mine preservation: As later Catholic

chroniclers argued, the Holy See, by con-

verting one of the greatest Roman build-

ings into a church, had inherited the glory

of the ancient world.

But legions of lesser-known buildings,

artworks and sites have also been cared

for and maintained across centuries and

traditions. Typically, that has been be-

cause they spoke to the people living

around them, regardless of the identity of

their creators.

During the Syrian civil war, while West-

ern leaders were wringing their hands

about Islamic State attacks on Palmyra,

the ancient trading city and UNESCO

World Heritage site, residents of Idlib, a

rebel-controlled province, courageously

protected the ancient, pre-Islamic mosa-

ics and structures in their communities.

They viewed these artifacts and sites as

crucial to their own contemporary Syrian

identity.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, too, cultural rec-

onciliation is still possible. Despite the dis-

mal record of the past three decades, both

sides have demonstrated awareness of —

and admiration for — heritage that is not

their own. In 2019, Armenians restored a

prominent 19th-century mosque in

Shusha (though they pointedly failed to

note its previous use by Azerbaijani Mus-

lims). And in his recent address, Mr.

Aliyev acknowledged the importance of

the region’s churches — even as he denied

their Armenian origin.

Security must come first. Russia has al-

ready deployed peacekeepers at Dadi-

vank Monastery and has pressed Azerbai-

jan to protect other Armenian monuments

now under its control. The European Un-

ion should make similar demands as part

of its offer of humanitarian aid, as well as

insist that Armenians’ access to impor-

tant churches is assured. The Azerbaijani

government, which already has obtained

much of what it wanted in the cease-fire,

would have a strong incentive to comply.

But a durable future for Armenian sites

— especially the numerous less known

medieval churches and ornate khachkars

— will require direct engagement by Ar-

menians and Azerbaijanis themselves.

Over centuries of turmoil, Dadivank

and other early Armenian sites have en-

dured — a reminder that the supposedly

ancient and intractable differences driv-

ing the current conflict are of recent man-

ufacture.

Like the beleaguered civilians around

them, these buildings need the world’s im-

mediate attention. But their very survival

so far points to a hopeful truth: It is the

natural inclination of human beings to

preserve; destruction takes special effort

and motivation. 0

Saving an Enemy’s Culture

SERGEI GRITS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

HUGH EAKIN, a Brown Foundation fellow,

is a journalist.

Hugh Eakin

Can the world persuade

Azerbaijan to preserve

Armenian monuments?

SOMETIMES IT SEEMSlike the single point
of consensus in America’s fractured poli-
tics is contempt for New York City’s may-
or, Bill de Blasio.
Even before Covid, animus against him
was a widely recognized phenomenon.
(“Why Bill de Blasio is so hated, ex-
plained,” said a Vox headline from last
year.) During the protests set off by the
killing of George Floyd, the left — includ-
ing many of the mayor’s current and for-
mer staff members — excoriated him for
refusing to stand up to the New York Po-
lice Department. In a failed bid to save his
House seat in a pro-Trump district, the
Democrat Max Rose ran an ad in which he
simply faced the camera and said, “Bill de
Blasio is the worst mayor in the history of
New York City.”
But if de Blasio has often been a bad
mayor, when it comes to educating kids
during the pandemic, he’s been one of the
best big city leaders in the country. That’s
both to his credit and to others’ disgrace.
This fall, when many other cities were
settling for the path of least resistance and
going fully remote, New York was the first
major city to reopen its schools for part-
time in-person education. And less than
two weeks after they shut down amid ris-
ing coronavirus cases, de Blasio has an-
nounced the goal of bringing some ele-
mentary students, as well as some stu-
dents with special needs, back full-time,
something few other cities have managed.
De Blasio’s public communication has
been characteristically awful, and his pol-
icy zigzags have induced whiplash among
many parents. Those who haven’t opted
into part-time in-person education proba-
bly won’t have the opportunity to return
full-time; it’s a possibility only because
many schools have just a small fraction of
students attending. The city has done a
poor job of explaining why the previous
threshold for closing schools — a citywide
coronavirus positivity rate of 3 percent —
no longer applies.
Nevertheless, at a time when many cit-
ies aren’t even attempting more than on-
line school, which is pedagogically disas-
trous, New York is doing something brave.
Working with Michael Mulgrew, the presi-
dent of New York City’s teachers union, de
Blasio has begun to chart a path back to
educational normalcy for at least some
kids. “Both of them have really tried in
ways that others have not,” Randi Wein-
garten, president of the American Federa-
tion of Teachers, told me.
The politics of school reopening are
hellishly complex, and don’t break down
along neat ideological lines.
Remote schooling has been particularly
awful for poor students and students of
color, and it’s exacerbating already severe
educational inequality. As Alec MacGillis
reported in September: “There has al-
ways been a gulf between public educa-
tion and private. But the new disparity is
stark: In many cities, children in private
schools are going to school, and children
in public schools are not.” My kids are be-
ing privately taught in a pod with other

children, and I have a hard time arguing
that online school is good enough for oth-
ers when it isn’t good enough for us.
At the same time, it’s the job of teachers
unions to protect their members. It’s not
surprising that many have resisted re-
opening when the federal government has
done so little to support schools, forcing
teachers to spend their own money on
cleaning supplies and protective gear.
Governors nationwide should be follow-
ing the lead of Rhode Island, closing bars
and gyms while leaving schools open, but
Senate Republicans won’t provide funding
to make up for lost tax revenues. Teachers
are being asked to take serious personal
risks for a society that doesn’t prioritize
them or their students.
That makes it all the more important
that the New York City plan, which will in-
clude weekly testing, has union buy-in.
“Mulgrew and I were both convinced by
the doctors that we were talking to, and
the industrial hygienists that we were
talking to,” Weingarten said, that with the
right safeguards and enough testing,
“schools could reopen safely.”
Many countries in Europe have already
done what New York is trying to do, keep-
ing the youngest kids, who seem to trans-
mit the virus less than adults, in school
even amid surging infections. Wein-
garten, who is reportedly being consid-
ered to be Joe Biden’s secretary of educa-
tion, says the city’s approach could be-
come a model for the country. “I’m actu-
ally optimistic given what New York City
is kind of plowing through,” she said.
When he was first elected mayor, de
Blasio changed the face of education in
New York City — and the lives of many
parents, myself included — by instituting
high-quality universal pre-K. Since then,
his time in office has been marked by em-
barrassments and disappointments.
If he were able to get kids back into
school full time in the middle of this calam-
ity, it would do much to salvage his reputa-
tion, as well as the morale of the city he’s
so haphazardly led. His off-again-on-
again reopening has been maddening, but
look around the country. No matter how
much people love to hate de Blasio, there
aren’t many examples of mayors handling
the school crisis better. 0

MICHELLE GOLDBERG

For Once,

De Blasio

Leads the Way

The mayor so many love

to hate is shining on

pandemic schooling.

IT MAY TAKE Aterrorist attack, a war or

some other national emergency, but

America will one day thank Justice Neil

Gorsuch for his stirring words last week

in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v.

Cuomo. “Government,” he wrote in a

concurrence to the 5-4 majority opinion,

“is not free to disregard the First Amend-

ment in times of crisis.”

The case arises from restrictions An-

drew Cuomo imposed by executive order

in October that sharply limit attendance

at houses of worship in zones designated

by the New York governor as pandemic

hot spots. In so-called orange zones, at-

tendance is capped at 25 people; in red

zones, at 10. That goes for churches and

synagogues that can seat hundreds and

that were already limiting attendance,

barring singing, practicing social dis-

tancing and taking other precautions.

The Catholic diocese, along with Agu-

dath Israel of America and affiliated enti-

ties, sued, arguing the restrictions

amounted to religious discrimination.

The crux of the matter was that busi-

nesses in orange and red zones, ranging

from liquor stores to bike shops to

acupuncturists, were subject to no such

restrictions because the governor had

deemed them “essential.”

“So, at least according to the governor,

it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is

always fine to pick up another bottle of

wine, shop for a new bike or spend the

afternoon exploring your distal points

and meridians,” Gorsuch wrote. “Who

knew public health would so perfectly

align with secular convenience?”

The Supreme Court’s decision only

temporarily prevents Cuomo from en-

forcing his executive order, pending a de-

cision by a U.S. Court of Appeals. But it

marks an important departure from sim-

ilar cases earlier this year, when the

court deferred to the judgment of gover-

nors for how best to handle the pan-

demic. It also rejects the view (argued by

New York State) that Cuomo treats

houses of worship in red zones more fa-

vorably than he does, say, movie the-

aters. The right to the free exercise of re-

ligion, even if subject to regulation, de-

serves greater deference than the right

to attend your local cineplex.

What changed? Most obviously, the

death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her

replacement by Amy Coney Barrett.

But other factors clearly weighed on

Gorsuch and the four other conservative

justices who voted with him. (Chief Jus-

tice John Roberts dissented.) One was

time. It was one thing for courts to defer

to executive authority in the early days

of the crisis. But how long can governors

override fundamental rights? “Even if

the Constitution has taken a holiday dur-

ing this pandemic, it cannot become a

sabbatical,” Gorsuch wrote.

Another was the game of Hot Zone

Whac-a-Mole that Cuomo tried to play

with the court as the case was working

its way through the legal system, by

switching the affected areas’ designa-

tions back to “yellow.” That was enough

to persuade Roberts and other dissent-

ers that they could leave well enough

alone, at least for now. But, as Gorsuch

noted, one also has to be modest about

judicial modesty: “We may not shelter in

place when the Constitution is under at-

tack. Things never go well when we do.”

That’s a thought that ought to inspire

everyone, liberals most of all. Imagine

slightly different circumstances, in

which, say, a conservative governor of a

red state had used pandemic concerns

last summer to impose draconian limits

on public protests, and that he had done

so using color-coded maps that focused

on denser urban areas and that seemed

to apply most restrictively to predomi-

nantly Black neighborhoods.

Now imagine this governor had, at the

same time, loosened restrictions on large

gatherings such as motorcycle rallies,

business conventions and football games

— on the grounds that these were essen-

tial to the economic well-being of the

state. Any objections?

The point here isn’t that the interests

of public safety and respect for executive

authority must always and fully give way

to the assertion of constitutional rights.

They shouldn’t and don’t. Nor is the point

that the behavior of religious communi-

ties during the pandemic has been be-

yond reproach, or beyond the reach of

justifiable legal sanction. It hasn’t.

The point is there are no second-class

rights — and the right to the free exercise

of religion is every bit as important to the

Constitution as the right to assemble

peaceably, petition government for re-

dress and speak and publish freely. That

goes in circumstances both ordinary and

extraordinary. As Justice Samuel Alito

put it in a speech in November that

caused some gnashing of teeth: “All

sorts of things can be called an emer-

gency or disaster of major proportions.

Simply slapping on that label cannot pro-

vide the ground for abrogating our most

fundamental rights.”

There is a perennial danger that rights

denied or abridged during one emer-

gency for one class of people will ulti-

mately be denied during another emer-

gency for another class. The reverse is

also true. The victory for conservatives

in last week’s ruling will be a victory for

liberals somewhere down the road. The

precedent set by the ruling, and the

power of Gorsuch’s concurrence, will

make the victory sweeter. 0

BRET STEPHENS

Thank You, Justice Gorsuch

Liberals will someday

celebrate last week’s

ruling for religious liberty.