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Major Figures Will Address Gala "Lifetime Achievement Award" Banquet

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  • Major Figures Will Address Gala "Lifetime Achievement Award" Banquet

    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: [email protected]
    Website: www.armenianchurch.org

    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
    (www.chgs.umn.edu).

    * * *

    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,
    www.armenianchurch.org

    (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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