In the United States, where the number of Kurds is small and national interest is weak, there is less attention to Kurdish centers or studies than in Europe. The Kurdish community in the United States is mainly from Iraq - Kurds who immigrated after the collapse of the 1975 revolution. These new immigrants maintained political loyalty to Kurdish political parties abroad; promoting Kurdish studies was not among their priorities. To remedy this situation, Dr. Vera Saeedpour, an American, established the Kurdish Program in 1981 and the Kurdish Library in 1986 in Brooklyn, New York. Both institutions helped to educate the public about the plight of the Kurds.

After 1987, there were calls among the Kurdish community in Canada and the US to work together and organize their efforts. The tragic gassing of the Kurds in Halabja and Badinian pushed the community harder. As a result, a few Kurdish organizations (with general goals and purposes) were formed; the League of Muslim Students in Kurdistan (1987), the Kurdish National Congress in North America (1988), Kurdish Relief Aid (1991), and the American Kurdish Information Network (1993). These institutions mainly seek to address the needs of the community and to increase awareness about the Kurds in the States as well as to lobby Congress and the administration for the Kurdish cause.

The aftermath of the Gulf War pushed the Kurdish issue to the forefront of world politics. Many individuals saw a need for a Kurdish education center in the United States to benefit both researchers in the US and in Kurdistan. Thus, the Badlisy Center was established to fill the gap. Registered as a non-profit, tax-exempt, educational institution in the state of Florida, the Center has as its main goal to carry out research on subjects related to the Kurds and Kurdistan.

To begin to understand the real situation of Kurdish studies in the United States as well as to pinpoint problems and propose solutions, the Center organized two meetings in March and June of this year in Washington, D.C.. We determined that 1) research on the Kurds and Kurdistan is still in a very early stage; 2) the quality of most published studies is not at the expected level; and 3) there are a limited number of scholars in the field. This situation has resulted from:

• The Kurds, unlike Palestinians, have not given academic work a priority;
• Studies about the Kurds are neglected by the governments that rule the Kurds and by other countries. As a result, students who come from the Middle East to pursue graduate work and are generally funded by their own governments avoid Kurdish studies.
• US academics are generally not interested in working on Kurdish issues.

Consequently,

• There is no Kurdish studies program in any of the 58 Middle East department or programs in the US universities affiliated with Middle East Studies Associations (MESA).
• Fewer than a dozen scholars and about the same number of doctoral students are actively pursuing topics in Kurdish studies.
• There are fewer than 20 doctoral dissertations on Kurdish topics versus 385 on Iraq, 1,115 on Iran, and 1,138 on Turkey.
• More than 300 articles on the Kurds were published in magazines and newspapers; contract this with the under 20 scholarly papers published in academic journals.
• Publications in English on Kurdish issues are rare. In the last three years, 27 books have been published compared to 45 during 1980-1989. Most of these books were generated from doctoral dissertations.
• There had been no single conference held about the Kurds in the United States previous to the Badlisy Center's March 1993 conference.

Knowing these facts, the Badlisy Center proposes a plan that will improve the status of Kurdish studies not only in the United States but rather in the world. The core of the plan is solving the shortage of scholars, initiating projects and enhancing the output, and organizing the present effort. The center plans to reach these goals in five ways:

Scholarships and Grants

One way to address the shortage of scholars is to initiate a scholarship program that will support doctoral students, both financially and intellectually, with the provision of a senior scholar in the field who can offer advice and direction. The Center is not yet in a position to provide scholarships. However, we are lobbying other academic institutions to do so. The Center has also generated more than one hundred topics which could be used for theses and dissertations.

The Center's grant program is designed to help individuals who need limited financial support. The grants will help cover the costs of participating in conferences and reimbursement of expenses for data collection. The Center started the grant program in 1992 and awarded a grant to one student. This year, four grants were awarded to graduate students who presented their papers at the MESA conference.

Exchange Program

The Center plans to conduct research on these broad subjects: civilization, culture, economy, history, language, politics, society, and strategic studies. Members of the Center's Advisory Committee will also help researchers. We can provide researchers with a list of foundations which might fund their projects. Researchers may use our archives and library which contain thousands of books, documents, reports, etc..

Conferences and Workshops

The Center will sponsor and co-sponsor conferences and will also participate in conferences. The following conferences and panels have been or will be organized in 1993-1995:

• "The Kurds: Political Status and Human Rights", BCKS's first conference, Washington, D.C., March 17-19, 1993.
• "Kurdish Nationalism and Interethnic Conflict" and "Kurdish in Regional Perspective", panels at MESA's 27th Annual Meeting, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, November 11-14, 1993.
• "The Kurds on the New Agenda of World Politics", panel at the International Studies Association annual meeting, March 29-April 1, 1994, Washington, D.C.
• "Democracy and Civil Society in Kurdistan-Iraq", BCKS's second conference, Arbil ,Kurdistan-Iraq, June 28-30, 1994.
• "The Kurds Between the Wars: 1918-1947" and "Kurdish Culture and Literature", panels at MESA's 28th Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, November 19-22, 1994.
• "The Kurds Toward 2000", BCKS's third conference, August, 1995.

Publications

There have been several attempts to start an academic journal for Kurdish studies; for example, Kurdish Times started in 1986 by Dr. Vera Saeedpour; Kurdistan Times started in 1990 by Mustafa al-Karadaghi; and the Journal of Kurdish Studies started in 1992 by the Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

However, these publications have hardly met their publications policy regarding the number of issues yearly. The reasons include the lack of financial support, the limited number of papers about the Kurds, and the fact that many scholars would prefer to public their papers in more well- known and well-accepted Middle East journals.

There is a great need for an English-language journal that specialized in Kurdish studies. Thus, the Badlisy Center's policy for 1992-1995 is to publish NAMAH, semi-scholarly newsletter, three times annually. In addition, the Center will publish papers submitted in conferences and workshops. This year alone, we have published 17 papers.

Certainly, in its rather short life of only two years, the Badlisy Center has become a valuable resource and hope for many researchers in the United States and Kurdistan. Nevertheless, when I compare the output of the past two years to all that has not been done, and all that needs to be done, I see that we have a formidable task before us. And unless there is real cooperation between various academic institutions, Kurdish studies will not reach the level at which we would like to see it.

NAMAH, Spring 1994, Vol. II, No. 1, pps. 3-4.