Aurora Humanitarian Initiative has issued a statement on the death of Vartan Gregorian.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Aurora co-founder and member of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee Vartan Gregorian (1934–2021) – an outstanding Armenian-American humanitarian, scholar, author, educator and mentor and a dear friend to many of us.
Born in Tabriz, Iran, Dr. Vartan Gregorian overcame countless challenges he faced as a young immigrant to the United States and went on to build a remarkable career that spanned several decades and crossed the lines of academia, philanthropy and culture within and beyond his adopted country. He was an ardent advocate of education and enlightenment, seeing books as “stations of hope, education and better future.”
In 1956, he enrolled at Stanford University, where he majored in history and the humanities, graduating with honors in 1958. Dr. Gregorian was awarded a Ph.D. in history and humanities by Stanford in 1964 and received the Danforth Foundation’s E.H. Harbison Distinguished Teaching Award in 1969.
In 1972, he joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history. He was founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and four years later became its twenty-third provost until 1981.
In 1981–1989, Dr. Gregorian served as president of The New York Public Library and was widely credited with restoring the status of the library as a cultural landmark. In 1989, he was appointed president of Brown University. Brown became both more global, more academically competitive and more financially secure under his leadership. During his tenure, he led a campaign that raised over $500 million, bringing the institution’s endowment past the $1 billion mark. Since 1997, Dr. Gregorian served as the twelfth president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 1998, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton. In 2004, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil award of the United States, by President Bush.
Dr. Gregorian was a man of great inner strength, a reservoir of compassion and infinite wisdom. He was awarded numerous fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he has received scores of honorary degrees and has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian and Portuguese governments.
A prolific author, Dr. Gregorian published several books, including The Road To Home: My Life and Times, Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith and The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1880-1946.
In 2015, together with Noubar Afeyan and Ruben Vardanyan, he co-founded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors.”
