Alexis Durden, a professor at Connecticut University, held the hand of the victim’s grandmother Park Ok-sun during her visit to Korea in 2016American historians are sending back one after another in an academic journal that decided to publish a thesis by Harvard Law School professor Mark Ramsey, who defined Japanese military comfort women victims as “voluntary prostitutes.
On the 19th (local time), Professor Alexis Durdon of the University of Connecticut announced on the 19th (local time) that at the request of the International Legal and Economic Review (IRLE), an article was sent to the journal editors refuting Ramzier’s thesis claim.
In addition to Professor Durdon, Professor Carter Eckert of the Department of East Asian Language and Culture at Harvard University and Professor Andrew Gordon of the Department of History released a statement the day before and sent a statement to the journal saying that there is a problem with the academic truth of Professor Ramsey’s thesis.
“I know that IRLE has requested essays from several scholars,” said Professor Durdon. “Other scholars’ writings will be released soon.”
Professor Durdon, who majored in modern and contemporary history in Japan and Korea, said in an essay submitted to IRLE entitled’Abuse of History: A Brief Response to Ramsey’s Claims on Sexual Contract’, “For those who read Professor Ramsey’s thesis at face value, “There will be no claims that support the current political ideology of Japan.”
He pointed out, “This worldview not only denies history, but also evokes sympathy for similar movements around the world such as’Trumpism’ (Trumpism).”
In particular, Ramzier’s explanation of the comfort women issue as a contractual relationship was criticized as “it is a shame to apply this term (contract relationship) to the history defined by the UN and Amnesty International as’anti-human crimes’.”
“Besides, the term wasn’t worth considering in the Japanese imperial era,” said Professor Durdon. “Because there were no’citizens’ who acted freely at that time, and everyone in the Japanese mainland and colony was’imperial citizens’.”
“Professor Ramzier’s thesis has obvious flaws in the evidence and citations,” he said. “It is very important to hold the blame on those who turn fake news into facts.”
Specifically, it raised the question that Professor Ramsey’s thesis was not only unfounded and did not contain the victim’s perspective.
The fact that the Japanese, the first comfort women on record, disregarded the Japanese record of trafficking victims and the research of Japanese scholars was presented as a basis for refutation.
According to a paper by Totsuka Etsuro, a renowned Japanese international law scholar published in English in 2006, in 1932, in connection with the case of 15 Japanese women being taken to a comfort station in Shanghai, China, a Japanese court in Nagasaki convicted Japanese men who deceived these women in 1936. Sentenced.
“It’s hard to believe any hypothesis that women have been deceived,” said Professor Durdon.
“Academic freedom is the core doctrine of constitutional democracy, but academic lies are not,” said Professor Durdon. “The racist arguments of the (historical) negativeists who have not yet been detected must never again pass academic scrutiny. “I finished the article.
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