History Professor Deemed Security Threat
On Feb. 16, 2007, Taner Akcam, a Turkish history professor at the University of Minnesota, flew to Montreal to deliver a lecture at McGill University on the much disputed Armenian genocide — which some say was a systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, though the Turkish government adamantly refutes it. Because of his controversial stance, Akcam had been the subject of Internet harassment, and his Wikipedia entry was sometimes edited by Turkish nationalists calling him a terrorist. Security officers at the Montreal airport detained Akcam, offering up a printed out copy of his Wikipedia page as reason for their suspicion. The mix-up was quickly sorted out, although Akcam was detained again two days later, when he returned to the U.S.