October 9, 2024 (released October 9, 2024)

Washington, D.C. - The Armenian National Institute (ANI) welcomed the appointment of a new Academic Council, reported ANI Academic Council chairman Dr. Armen Baibourtian. “I am honored to announce the appointment of new members to the ANI Academic Council,” stated Dr. Baibourtian, “and I am looking forward to working with our very distinguished group of experts, along with our Director, Dr. Rouben Adalian."

“On behalf of the ANI Board of Governors, I want to welcome this accomplished group of scholars and thank them for joining in ANI’s work,” added ANI Board of Governors Chairman Van Z. Krikorian. “The legacy of the Armenian Genocide continues and the need for information and education to prevent further atrocities is especially clear after witnessing the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.” ANI recently expanded its leading Armenia Genocide resource website to include a section titled The Ethnic Cleansing and Destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh: The Latest Chapter of the Armenian Genocide.

Twelve new members are joining the ANI Academic Council, including Gregory Aftandilian of American University, in Washington, DC; Paul Boghosian of New York University; Antranig Dakessian of Haigazian University, in Beirut; Asya Darbinian of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College, in New Jersey; Barlow Der Mugrdechian of California State University, Fresno; Daniel Fittante of the University of Helsinki; David Hovhannisyan of Yerevan State University; Stefan Ihrig of the University of Haifa; Harutyun Marutyan of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia; Vahram Shemmassian of the University of California, Northridge; Erna Shirinyan of the Matenadaran in Yerevan, and Michelle Tusan of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

They join Peter Balakian of Colgate University; Robert Melson of Purdue University emeritus; and Claire Mouradian, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris, emerita, who are remaining on the ANI Academic Council and have been serving since its formation in 1997.

Aftandilian is Senior Professorial Lecturer in Foreign Policy and Global Security at American University. A former Department of State analyst, he has published extensively on the Middle East and is the author of Armenia: Vision of a Republic and has been researching on the impact of the Armenian Genocide on descendants of survivors, about which he has written several articles. Boghossian is professor of philosophy at New York University and author of Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism who has written extensively on the concept of genocide and is heading the Armenian Genocide Denial Project at the NYU Global Institute for Advanced Study. Dakessian heads the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University in Lebanon and has been the editor of the Haigazian Armenological Review and several volumes recording the history and culture of Armenian communities of the Middle East. Darbinyan is Executive Director of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College and has researched and published on the topic of humanitarianism and Armenian refugees in the Russian Caucasus. Darbinyan earned a doctorate from the Clark University Kaloosdian/Mugar Chair in Modern Armenian History and Armenian Genocide Studies.

Der Mugrdechian, the longtime Coordinator of the Armenian Studies Program and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at Fresno State, is the editor of several volumes on Armenian culture and language and editor of the Armenian Series issued by The Press at California State University, Fresno. Fittante of the University of Helsinki is the author of Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs: Outsiders Inside Armenian Los Angeles and has published a series of articles examining the process of recognition of the Armenian Genocide by European governments. Hovhannisyan, the Director of the Center for Civilization and Cultural Studies at Yerevan State University is an authority in Islamic studies and a former ambassador in the Armenian foreign service. Ihrig is professor of history and author of Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination and Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler. Marutyan of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and immediate past Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, is the author of Iconography of Armenian Identity: The Memory of Genocide and the Karabagh Movement and was a Research Fellow at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in Washington, DC.

Shemmassian, the Director of the Armenian Studies Program at California State University Northridge, is the author of The Armenians of Musa Dagh: From Obscurity to Genocide Resistance and Fame 1840-1915. Erna Shirinyan, professor of theology at Yerevan State University, also heads the Department for the Study of Armenian Texts at the Matenadaran, the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts. Tusan is professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and is the author of The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill and Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East.

Balakian, professor in humanities at Colgate University and Pulitzer prize-winning poet, is the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response and Black Dog of Fate among other publications, translations, and poetry collections. Melson, professor emeritus of political science at Purdue University and past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), is the author of Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Mouradian, emeritus Director of Research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris and professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), among other works is the author of De Staline à Gorbatchev: histoire d'une république soviétique, l'Arménie and co-author of Les Arméniens en France : Du chaos à la reconnaissance and Manouchian: Missak et Mélinée Manouchian, deux orphelins du génocide arménien engagés dans la résistance française.
Founded in 1997, the Armenian National Institute (ANI) is a 501(c)(3) educational charity based in Washington, D.C., and is dedicated to the study, research, and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. The ANI website can be consulted in English, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic. ANI also maintains the online Armenian Genocide Museum of America (AGMA).

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NR# 2024-02