PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (E.)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Chris Zakian
Tel: (212) 686-0710; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: prl@armeniandiocese.org
Website:

March 9, 2005
____________________

VARTAN GREGORIAN, STEPHEN FEINSTEIN, AND PETER BALAKIAN TO BE FEATURED
AT BANQUET HONORING GENOCIDE SCHOLAR VAHAKN DADRIAN

Major Figures Will Address Gala “Lifetime Achievement Award” Banquet at
Diocesan Center, NYC, on Apr. 2

* * *

Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian and Holocaust specialist
Stephen Feinstein will be the keynote speakers, and author Peter
Balakian will be Master of Ceremonies, at the upcoming “Lifetime
Achievement Award” banquet honoring Dr. Vahakn N. Dadrian, the eminent
scholar of the Armenian Genocide.

The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America will bestow a
special Lifetime Achievement Award on Dr. Dadrian during a gala banquet
on Saturday, April 2, 2005. His Eminence Archbishop Khajag Barsamian,
the Diocesan Primate, will preside over the event and present the award
to Dr. Dadrian.

In addition, the banquet guests will view a multi-media presentation on
Dr. Dadrian’s life and work, by the Zoryan Institute. (For reservation
information, see below.)

Dr. Vahakn N. Dadrian is recognized as the world’s foremost authority on
the Armenian Genocide. Over the past 35 years, he has laid the
scholarly groundwork for the study of the Genocide, and with his mastery
of five languages and his ability to integrate the disciplines of
history, law, and sociology, Dr. Dadrian is uniquely qualified for the
work of piecing together related facts from scattered sources.

In addition to his success in placing the Armenian Genocide in the
mainstream of international scholarship, Dr. Dadrian is one of the
pioneers in the field of comparative genocide research. His multi-level
methodological framework for the field of comparative genocide studies
is considered a major contribution to an ultimate “theory of genocide.”

Biographical sketches of the three major featured guests appear below.

* * *

VARTAN GREGORIAN is the 12th president of Carnegie Corporation of New
York, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911.
Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Dr.
Gregorian served for nine years as the 16th president of Brown
University.

He was born in Tabriz, Iran, to Armenian parents, receiving his early
education in Iran and later Lebanon. In 1956 he entered Stanford
University, where he majored in history and the humanities, graduating
with honors in 1958. He was awarded a doctorate in history and
humanities from Stanford in 1964.

Gregorian has taught European and Middle Eastern history at San
Francisco State College, the University of California at Los Angeles,
and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1972, he joined the
University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed the 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 23rd provost,
serving until 1981.

For eight years (1981-1989), Gregorian was president of the New York
Public Library, an institution with a network of four research libraries
and 83 circulating libraries. In 1989 he was appointed president of
Brown University.

Gregorian is the author of The Road to Home: My Life And Times; Islam: A
Mosaic, Not A Monolith; and The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan,
1880-1946. A Phi Beta Kappa and a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training
Fellow, he is a recipient of numerous fellowships, and is a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts of Sciences, and the American Philosophical
Society.

He serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton, Human Rights Watch, and the Museum of Modern Art. He served
on the boards of J. Paul Getty Trust, the Aga Khan University, the
McGraw-Hill Companies, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He
has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese
governments. His numerous civic and academic honors include some 56
honorary degrees.

In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal.
In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the
nation’s highest civil award.

* * *

STEPHEN C. FEINSTEIN is Emeritus Professor of History at the University
of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he has taught history and art history
since l969. Dr. Feinstein received his bachelor’s degree from Villanova
University, and a doctorate in Russian history from New York University.
He has taught courses on Russian art and architecture and lectures on
Western European art.

He was guest curator for the 5,000 square foot exhibition, Witness and
Legacy: Contemporary Art About the Holocaust, at the Minnesota Museum of
American Art. The exhibition was on tour through the year 2002 at 16
other museum sites across the United States. In 1999, Dr. Feinstein was
curator of a 7,000 square foot exhibition at the University of
Minnesota’s Nash Gallery, Absence/Presence: The Artistic Memory of the
Holocaust and Genocide.

Dr. Feinstein has been a frequent lecturer at universities in the U.S.
and Europe on artistic responses to the Holocaust and problems of
representation. He was an invited scholar to the Stockholm
International Conference (2000), and the European Union Conference on
Holocaust Education through the Arts (2002). He is also a curatorial
consultant for the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, and a
member of the board of directors of the Association of Holocaust
Organizations (AHO).

He served recently as the Ida B. King Distinguished Professor of
Holocaust Studies at New Jersey’s Richard Stockton University. A book
edited by Dr. Feinstein, Absence/Presence: Critical Essays and
Reflections on Art of the Holocaust, will be published by Syracuse
University Press in 2005.

Since September 1997, Dr. Feinstein has served as director for the
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of
Minnesota, whose purpose is to provide a resource for teaching about the
Holocaust and other forms of genocide. Since the establishment of CHGS,
issues surrounding the history and memory of the Armenian Genocide have
been a central part of both the program and the center’s website
().

* * *

PETER BALAKIAN holds a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University, and a
doctorate in American Civilization from Brown University. He teaches at
Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar
Professor of the Humanities; he specializes in American poetry, poetry
writing, American literature, modern Irish poetry, and genocide studies.

His dramatic 1997 memoir, Black Dog of Fate, told the story of his
awakening to the Armenian Genocide, and its unspoken effects on his own
family. The book proved to be a milestone in the popular recognition of
the Genocide, and has gained worldwide notice through its numerous
translated editions. It was listed among the New York Times and Los
Angeles Times “Notable Books,” and won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for
memoirs.

In Dr. Balakian’s recent book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide
and America’s Response (2003), he returns to the theme of the tragedy of
1915–this time from the perspective of contemporary humanitarian
responses to the widely reported annihilation of Turkey’s Armenian
population. The book spent a number of weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list, and was a “Notable Book” for both the Times and
Publishers Weekly.

Beyond his roles as scholar, memoirist, and advocate, Dr. Balakian’s
first vocation is as a poet; collections of his arresting poems include:
June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000 (2001), Dyer’s Thistle
(1996), a translation of Siamanto’s Bloody News From My Friend (1996),
Reply From Wilderness Island (1988), Sad Days of Light (1983), and
Father Fisheye (1979). He has contributed his poetry and essays to The
Nation, Art in America, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Partisan
Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry, among other periodicals.
He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

* * *

The Lifetime Achievement Award banquet honoring Dr. Vahakn Dadrian will
take place on Saturday, April 2, 2005, at Haik and Alice Kavookjian
Auditorium of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (630 Second
Avenue, New York City). A reception starting at 6:30 p.m. will precede
the dinner and program at 7:30 p.m. The donation for this event is $125
per person, and tables of ten can be reserved for $1,250. Proceeds will
be used to establish a special fund in Dr. Dadrian’s honor.

Reservations for the event are still being taken, and may be made by
calling the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), at
(212) 686-0710, ext. 36.

–3/9/05

E-mail photos available on request. Photos also viewable in the News
and Events section of the Eastern Diocese’s website,

(1) PHOTO CAPTION: Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation
of New York, will be one of two keynote speakers at the Lifetime
Achievement Award banquet honoring Genocide scholar Dr. Vahakn Dadrian,
on April 2, at the Diocesan Center in New York City.

(2) PHOTO CAPTION: Stephen C. Feinstein, director for the Center for
Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, will also
deliver a keynote address during the Dadrian banquet.

(3) PHOTO CAPTION: Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate and The
Burning Tigris, both of which deal with the Armenian Genocide and its
aftermath, will be Master of Ceremonies at the April 2 Dadrian banquet.

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