Obituary to a Great American Armenian, VARTAN GREGORIAN
Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, formerly President of Brown University, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and President of the New York Public Library has passed away at the age of 87.
Dr. Gregorian was the recipient of the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was born to Armenian parents in Tabriz, Iran, went on to receive his secondary education at the Armenian College in Beirut, Lebanon, and in 1956 moved to attend Stanford University where he was awarded a PhD some years later.
The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Jerusalem celebrates Dr. Gregorian’s outstanding intellectual leadership and inspiration. As director of the Institute, I recall with great appreciation my first meeting with Dr. Gregorian at his office at the New York Public Library where we sat together and formulated a preliminary basic list of ‘instructions’ for how to deny a genocide. Over the many years that followed of my work on the process of denial of the Armenian Genocide and any and all specific genocides, this serious-satirical series of templates, and the warmly inspiring spirit of Dr. Gregorian, continued to be a major basis for the development of further understanding of denial.
In more recent years, as president of the Carnegie Foundation, Dr. Gregorian was the driving force in generating substantial financial support for development by our Institute of a new model for communicating news about genocide and genocide scholarship around the world (our web magazine from 2010-2012, GPN Genocide Prevention Now – selections from this website can be seen at https://www.ihgjlm.com/a-classification-of-denials-of-the-holocaust-and-other-genocides-updated-2012/.
The New York Times commented, “Dr. Gregorian was a fighter: proud, shrewd, charming, a brilliant historian and educator who rose from humble origins to win… sheaves of honors” (April 16, 2021).
“Templates for Gross Denial of a Known Genocide: A Manual,” in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, volume 1, page 168.
1. Question and minimize the statistics.
2. Attack the motivations of the truth-tellers.
3. Claim that the deaths were inadvertent
4. Emphasize the strangeness of the victims.
5. Rationalize the deaths as the result of tribal conflict.
6. Blame “out of control” forces for committing the killings.
7. Avoid antagonizing the genocidists, who might walk out of “the peace process.”
8. Justify denial in favor of current economic interests.
9. Claim that the victims are receiving good treatment.
10.Claim that what is going on doesn’t fit the definition of genocide.
11.Blame the victims.
12. Say that peace and reconciliation are more important than blaming people for genocide.