WATERTOWN — On Monday, April 1, there will be a St. James Armenian Church Men’s Club dinner meeting at the Charles Mosesian Cultural and Youth Center in Watertown. This meeting will be celebrated as a “Father, Daughter, and Son” evening. The speaker will be Steven Biondolillo, a pioneer in the fields of public health and human services marketing, and peer -to-peer special-event fundraising. His presentation topic is titled “Rethinking Teambuilding.”

The pressure on high-performance teams is as great as it has ever been. Yet, due to two critical trend lines, the ability of teams to excel is often at risk. The first trend line is the burgeoning number of individuals in the nation’s workforce who are telecommuting. People don’t see each other anymore. The second revolves around communications technology and the widespread use of email, texting, and social media, all of which promote a shallow/shorthand way of connecting. These trend lines militate against the optimum development of high-performance teams, whose members need to communicate deeply, understand profoundly, and attach squarely to the team and its objectives. Biondolillo will briefly discuss these trends, explain the shortcomings of “typical team builders,” and offer a powerful yet basic solution to the challenge of building teams.

This St. James Men’s Club Father, Daughter, and Son dinner meeting will begin with a social hour and mezza at 6:15 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m.

Ladies are invited.

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LODI, N.J. — The Tekeyan Cultural Association (TCA) of Greater New York, under the auspices of the TCA Board of Directors of the United States and Canada, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its chapter through a Valentine’s dinner-dance on February 9 featuring international Armenian superstar André and DJ Shant (Babikian). The event was held in the elegant banquet hall of the Elan events and wedding center.

At the start of the formal program, guests were welcomed by TCA Greater New York chapter Vice Chair Vartan Ilanjian, who introduced the chapter’s chair, Hilda Hartounian. Hartounian recognized the roles of past chairmen and members in reaching this golden anniversary as well as the members of the fiftieth anniversary committee, which included Talia Bouldoukian, Katia Buchakjian, Sylvia Buzantian, Aline Madalian, Nanor Kradjian and Margaret Janikian, along with Hartounian, Ilanjian, TCA Greater New York Treasurer Barkev Kalayjian and chapter adviser Nadya Boyadjian.

Hartounian acknowledged the generosity and support of event benefactors Ed and Carmen Gulbenkian, and Vartan Nazerian of Los Angeles, and emphasized that “Our mission has always been and will always be to promote Armenian cultural and educational activities around the world.”

Ilanjian then read a congratulatory letter to the chapter from the TCA Central Board, which stated, among other things, that “You have invigorated and enriched our culture through many projects in theater, arts and literature. You have projected your activities well beyond the circle of your membership, serving the needs of the entire community.”

Fr. Norayr Kazazian, a vartabed now serving in the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America who previously was Director of the Gulbenkian Library and Dean of Sts. Tarkmanchatz Armenian School in Jerusalem, took the podium to add his congratulations. He spoke with pride of his days as a student in the TCA Vahan Tekeyan School of Beirut and voiced his joy in seeing Armenians coming together in the diaspora in the name of their culture and heritage.

Special guests that evening included Ambassador Mher Margaryan, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations, and TCA Central Board President Edmond Y. Azadian, Executive Director Aram Arkun, and board members Hagop Vartivarian, Kevork Marashlian and Mihran Minassian.

One of the highlights of the evening was when Ambassador Margaryan, President Azadian and benefactors Ed and Carmen Gulbenkian were called forth to participate in the cutting of the fiftieth-anniversary cake.

Singer André Hovnanyan energized the crowd with his lively musical presentations. He and DJ Shant kept the audience dancing and clapping throughout the evening. In a video interview of the event, André thanked TCA for inviting him to this event, and in several Armenian television programs aired in following weeks, André expressed his amazement and pleasure that even some fourth-generation Armenian-Americans had come to the Tekeyan event to enjoy Armenian music and dance that evening.

André is extremely popular in Armenia. He was born in Stepanakert, Artsakh, in 1979, and began singing at the early age of three. He wrote his first song at the age of nine and won the “Road to Renaissance” musical contest six years later. In 1998, he began to work as a professional at the State Theater of Music in Yerevan, while studying at the Yerevan State Conservatory, and eventually obtained his doctorate.

In 2006, André was the first artist to represent Armenia in the Eurovision song contest in Athens, and finished in eighth place. He has served as a judge in various television shows in Armenia such as “Pop Idol,” “My Name Is…”, “Premiere,” and “The X-Factor,” and had his own reality show called “Andrenaline.” He has been living in Los Angeles for about three years and soon he will open his own Andre Art Academy school for music and dance there.

The evening included an extensive silent auction.

TCA Greater New York chair Hartounian after the event declared it to be a complete success. More than 250 tickets were sold for the venue, so that full capacity was reached. Hartounian said, “This was a wonderful event that allowed us to celebrate our golden anniversary in an enjoyable atmosphere. Our community rallied together once more to show its support for Tekeyan’s activities. We remain invigorated and ready to continue our mission in the greater New York area and invite all who share the goal of disseminating Armenian culture to join us.”

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MILWAUKEE, Wis. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) — A 104-year-old Milwaukee photographer who survived the Armenian genocide, shot photos of President Franklin Roosevelt and saw Babe Ruth play at Yankee Stadium has died.

Artin Haig died Monday, March 4, of natural causes at St. John’s on the Lake where he lived.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in December, Haig talked about the incredible things he did and witnessed in his eventful life. That included watching his favorite players Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth while he lived in New York.

“I used to go to baseball games and I used to sit on the third base side because I liked to see them steal home,” Haig said.

Haig would have turned 105 in August.

In an earlier interview with the paper, he had said, “I used to go to baseball games and I used to sit on the third base side because I liked to see them steal home.”

“Babe Ruth was my favorite player and Lou Gehrig second. Babe Ruth was not only friendly, he was outgoing,” said Haig. “Lou Gehrig was a very good player. He was actually a better player than Babe Ruth though Babe Ruth had a few more home runs.”

That’s true — Babe Ruth hit 714 homers and Gehrig, whose career was cut short by the illness that now carries his name, hit 493.

Born Haig Artin Kojababian in Armenia in 1914, less than a week after the start of World War I, he was orphaned at the age of 4 or 5. He saw his mother dragged away by Turkish soldiers; his father, a math professor, disappeared. His family was wealthy and among the ruling class in their Armenian village of Hadjin.

He fled Armenia and lived with an uncle in Constantinople, then moved to Marseilles, France, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, before immigrating to New York when he was around 10 years old. There, a distant cousin owned a photography studio in Times Square. Haig wanted to photograph pretty girls and he asked his cousin, who took pictures for theater producer Flo Ziegfeld, what he needed to do to become a professional photographer.

“I learned photography from him. He made me study chemistry so I knew how to mix chemicals. I would add chemicals for more contrast,” said Haig.

While he was in high school, the always nattily dressed Haig worked at a grocery store for an uncle who operated a large Oriental rug business and as a messenger on Wall Street. He remembers the 1929 Wall Street crash, which led to the Great Depression. “But it didn’t affect me. We still worked, but tips were not as good.”

His skills as a photographer improved and eventually photography would become his life’s work.

Haig moved to Washington, DC, and worked for Underwood & Underwood, a news photography company that had studios at hotels where brides would come to get their photos taken. At that time, Haig recalled, brides would arrange for photos to be taken by two or three photographers free of charge before choosing their favorite to hire.

He also found his own bride at Underwood & Underwood — his wife, Mabel, who was known as Caroline, was a receptionist at the firm. They were married for more than four decades before she died in 1977 of lung cancer.

Though he became known for his bridal photography, Haig was also Underwood & Underwood’s White House photographer, and he snapped photos of the most famous Washington resident.

Haig and two assistants always traveled to the White House early to set up lights and cameras before President Franklin Roosevelt arrived. Haig got only seven to eight minutes to take as many pictures as he could — usually around a dozen shots — before the busy Roosevelt needed to be somewhere else.

“I would talk to him and when I got a good expression I snapped the picture,” said Haig.

One time, Roosevelt’s French cuffs were scrunched up and Haig helped the president smooth them out.

“The next time I saw him he didn’t remember my name but he said, ‘Are you going to fix my cuffs?’ I said, ‘Yes sir, Mr. President,’ ” Haig said. “I was never shy to speak freely. I would say ‘Mr. President, when I’m taking the pictures, I’m the boss.'”

“If he didn’t like what the person was wearing, he would make them change,” said his daughter, Dolores Mishelow. “He thought if it wasn’t flattering, they wouldn’t like it. They never complained.”

He moved from Washington, D.C., to Dallas to work for Gittings, a prominent portrait studio at a time when portrait photography was big. Haig moved to Milwaukee in 1954 and bought a photography studio next to Chapman’s Department Store across from the Pfister Hotel on Wisconsin Avenue.

He later opened up B. Artin Haig Photography studios elsewhere in the Milwaukee area.

At the age of 93 he traveled back to his homeland with his daughters, but his village had been destroyed by the Turks during the Armenian genocide.

“There wasn’t much that he recognized,” said Mishelow. “He had never been back since he escaped at night with the help of the Kurdish people. I’m sure it was very emotional for him. I think it was exciting for him to see.”

He continued taking photos into his 90s, by then using Hasselblad cameras. As his eyesight weakened, he used an assistant and had someone carry his camera equipment. He tried digital photography, but Haig never warmed up to it. To Haig, film remained the best medium.

“Photography to me is as creative as any painting can be. I feel we can make a better picture than any painter can make it,” said Haig.

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. John’s on the Lake chapel, 1840 N. Prospect Ave., Milwaukee.

He is survived by four daughters, Caroline Case, Dolores Mishelow, Raquel Gutherie and Artyn Gardner, nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and one great-great-granddaughter.

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BOSTON — If you see him on the street in Boston, 54-year-old Thomas Catena may not seem different from any other guy. But Dr. Tom Catena is no ordinary person. He was chosen by Time magazine in 2015 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has exerted extraordinary efforts to provide medical assistance to people in need in Africa and is an inspiring role model for those who wish to do humanitarian work. In December 2018, he was named as chairman of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative. As such, he had come to Boston as part of an outreach tour at the end of January 2019, with several university talks and meetings.

Catena grew up in Amsterdam, a town in upstate New York, as the fifth of seven siblings. After graduating Brown University, he went to medical school at Duke University on a US Navy scholarship. After his internship he served for four years as a flight surgeon for the Navy. Although he did his military service to finance his education, he ended up liking the sense of purpose and community and if he had not wanted to work in the mission field in Africa, he said that he would have stayed longer.

He said he always liked reading about other societies and cultures as a youth, but as a Catholic, he felt a calling to do missionary work when he was in college. He pointed out that having four older brothers already married with children made it easier for his parents to support his doing this work, no longer feeling the need to push him for grandchildren.

Catena did several short medical mission trips in 1997 and 1998, and after completing his residency in 1999, worked in Kenya with the Catholic Medical Missionary Board (CMMB) as a missionary doctor until 2007. He then helped found the Mother of Mercy Hospital in the village of Gidel in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan in 2008. He has been the only doctor permanently based in this region of South Kordofan, serving as many as 750,000 people, and remained there after fighting broke out between the Khartoum-based government and the Nuba people several years later, in what many call a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Patients trekked there for all types of diseases and medical problems, to which were added war and famine victims.

Already isolated due to its geography, the Nuba region became even more difficult of access for international humanitarian organizations during the fighting and a blockade by the Sudanese government. Fortunately, the conflict has been quiet for a year and a half. Catena explained that the biggest problem for access now is that the roads are terrible. In the dry season, it would take six hours to make it from the hospital to beyond the mountains, but during the rainy season from May to the end of October the roads turn to mud and it is tricky to get out due to flooding.

Due to lack of resources, deprived of most of the tools of modern technology, Catena has had to improvise or use outmoded forms of treatment. Often working around the clock in extremely difficult situations, he has saved many lives and is locally revered by Christian and Muslim alike according to most accounts. New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof reported a few years ago in a column about him titled “‘He’s Jesus Christ’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-hes-jesus-christ.html) that he did all this on a salary of only $350 a month, with no pension or health insurance.

Aurora Humanitarian Initiative

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative (https://auroraprize.com/en/prize/detail/about) that Catena chairs is called by its three Armenian founders, Noubar Afeyan, Ruben Vardanyan and Vartan Gregorian, “gratitude in action” on behalf of the descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and includes among its components the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, the Aurora Dialogues, the Aurora Humanitarian Index, the Gratitude Projects and the 100 Lives Initiative. Catena came to this position by first being selected as the 2017 Aurora Prize laureate in May of that year—in other words, he was one of the “modern-day saviors” whom the Aurora founders wished to empower in the humanitarian field. In recognition of the courage and commitment he evinced in his work, he received a $100,000 grant and was able to give a further $1 million to encourage organizations of his choice. He chose the African Mission Healthcare Foundation (USA), the Catholic Medical Mission Board (USA), and Aktion Canchanabury (Germany).

Now, Catena said, “In the role as chairman, I think what the fund is looking for is more or less for someone to be the public face of Aurora.” As such, he already is raising the profile of Aurora by representing it at various functions, including public events, speaking engagements, meetings, and press interviews.

While perhaps too modest to say this himself, a public relations assistant pointed out that Catena can inspire people to take action and is an excellent role model. As an American, he can show Americans and other Westerners that it is indeed possible to make a great difference in peoples’ lives through personal sacrifice and commitment, whether as a doctor or in other fields.

Furthermore, as Catena and the other Aurora finalists and laureates are evidence of what Aurora is doing now, hopefully people will wish to give resources to support this type of work and these types of individuals.

Catena added that his work included helping to plan for the future work of Aurora and help formulate new ideas. He said, “A lot of it, the way I see it, is also advising Aurora on how to proceed and what to do as a humanitarian organization. Right now, we have the Aurora Prize, but what else does it mean to be Aurora? In what direction do we want to go?”

To avoid duplication of the efforts of others, Catena is trying to learn what others are doing and seeing how Aurora can fit in. He said, “I think for Aurora, at least for now, we are interested more in direct support and direct aid to small people.” In other words, not being a large organization like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Aurora can work on the grassroots level in a nimble fashion. Whether it can later take on more of an advocacy role remains to be seen.

Catena has been out of the Sudan for three months and aside from his speaking engagements with the public, has begun meeting with nongovernmental organizations, United Nations organizations, World Health Organization (WHO), and many other international actors, gathering information about what they do and seeing how Aurora fits in the whole humanitarian sphere.

In effect, there are three groups of people with whom Catena is talking during his present tour. Aside from the humanitarian sector there are also religious groups (for example, while at the University of Southern California in February he spoke at the Caruso Catholic Center) and Armenians.

When asked why he would take time from his work in the Sudan to which he is so dedicated, he replied, “I was interested in working with Aurora to take it to a more global scale, or if not global, at least in an African context.” He said that perhaps he could duplicate what was being done in Nuba elsewhere and would like to highlight people doing similar work in different places and get them resources so they can extend what they are doing to broader communities.

He said that the UN and large organizations do not have a presence in places like Nuba, which are closed off, so that if you can provide information from people already working in isolated conflict zones and other neglected areas, this is already a very useful function.

The Aurora planning process will take time. Catena said, “I have a long view of this stuff. It will take a few years to really get solidified in what we are exactly doing, but I think we are off to a good start. We have learned quite a bit over the past couple of months. I think Aurora has some very doable and workable ideas in this context and will add something to the humanitarian sector.”

Dedicated to Nuba

While accepting his position at Aurora, Catena has not stopped doing his work in Nuba. He will go back and forth. At present he has been out for over three months but will return there in early March. While in Nuba he anticipates communicating through email and Skype for Aurora work but will not be able to physically leave during six months. While in the Sudan, the nuts and bolts of the Aurora operations will be continued by Chief Operating Officer Dr. Hayk Demoyan, formerly the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. Then from September to November, Catena will be out in the broader world again.

His commitment to Nuba is such that even when he left to receive the Aurora Prize in 2017, he set as a condition for the trip finding replacement doctors. Aurora was able to find three Armenian doctors who came to the Sudan for about two weeks.

At present, there is a pediatrician who has joined the hospital in Nuba for a couple of years, but when Catena travels, he always has to find replacements for himself. Right now, while he is abroad, there are three different doctors hired on contract from Uganda for a three-month period to cover surgery, adult medicine, and other medical work. Catena is still looking for volunteers to come out for the next three-month period as volunteers, including a surgeon and a general doctor for maternity care, but if there are no volunteers the Ugandans will have to be hired again.

Catena is not just a physician in Africa, but also a Catholic missionary. However, his approach is not a direct and aggressive one. He prefers, he said, “to inspire people by your actions,” and likes an expression attributed to St. Francis, whether or not it may be apocryphal. St. Francis supposedly said, according to Catena, to preach always, and sometimes use words. Catena said, “First you show the love of Christ by your actions, then with time you talk in a quiet way, not with a lot of loudness and too many words. Your faith will speak for you.” Catena also, incidentally, says he has a great appreciation of Armenian Christianity.

His understated approach allows him to work with all kinds of organizations, and he similarly sees Aurora as bringing together people of all religious beliefs. He said, “The way I see it, Aurora is a secular organization which allows for the expression of different faiths. … For Aurora, humanitarianism is something that can cross faiths, hopefully celebrating the good in each of them.” He noted as an example that the last Aurora laureate chosen is a Muslim.

His personal view on the Armenian Genocide is that “the more things are shoved under the rug, the easier it is to have them happen again.” In other words, education and the work for justice for the Armenian Genocide are important for ongoing genocides as in Darfur and Nuba or of the Rohingya.

Catena has seen that dehumanization, often through tradition or religion, can lead people to commit genocide. He said, “The only counterweight to that is to bring it out in the open, recognize it and somehow try to forgive what has happened. Then you can start to go on track again. Otherwise all you have is revenge.” Revenge killings and feuds are a big problem, he said, in the South Sudan, though not where his hospital is.

For the Nubans, the main issue is the ethnic problem, with the people they call Arabs, who have oppressed them. One way he thinks for the Nuba to overcome the situation of being treated as inferiors is to become really good at something so that the others come to them for help. The medial work of the hospital is one example that reaches throughout Sudan, and people before the fighting did come long distances for their help.

To those who wish to do humanitarian work all their lives, Catena advises that there are going to be sacrifices along the way. He said, “Forget about living a Western lifestyle. Forget about having a Western life. Forget about the family that you grew up with. All of this is sacrifice.”

He said that all of this is weighed against what you want to do. He has gotten used to the life in Nuba. He said, “The living conditions for some people might be intolerable, but not for me. I prefer living in that environment.”

He continued, “The sacrifice for me comes with not seeing the family for three years, and not seeing my nephews and nieces grow up.  I am older and we don’t have any kids yet so I have missed out on all that stuff. You have to accept some of these things if you want to do it long term. It is really up to the individual.”

However, it is not necessary for everyone to go to this extreme and there are other levels or ways to help. Catena said that many people work in the field for several years after finishing their studies, and then return to their homes in the West. Though they cannot do all that can be done on the spot, they can continue to work at an administrative level for humanitarian organizations. Other people contribute financially after switching fields.

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BELMONT, Mass. — The Hai Guin Scholarship Association will hold its 2019 Spring Benefit Luncheon on Saturday, April 27th at the Belmont Country Club, Belmont. This year a fashion presentation and pop-up shop will be featured by world renowned St. John, of Boston, MA.

St. John is an American luxury house that was founded in 1962 by Robert and Marie Gray. It is a fascinating coming together of craft and couture based on the premise of a simple, yet elegant knit dress. Over the years, the brand has evolved, but the basis for the collection remains the same today as it did from the very start — effortless, alluring, and refined clothing that appeals to women all over the world. St. John has a unique American design with a core in signature innovative knits, and has an undisputed reputation for luxury and quality.

The Spring Benefit will begin with a silent auction, raffle prizes, a pop-up shop and more, followed by a luncheon and a Fashion Presentation by St. John. Michele Kolligian, Joyce Jones, and Pamela Gechijian, Benefit Co-Chairs, Gladys Partamian, president, and committee members are diligently working to put the final touches on the Spring Benefit event. Committee members are: Christine Berberian and Andrea Garabedian, ticket reservations; Karen Martin, donations; Carol Haroutunian, centerpieces; Sandra Aghababian, program booklet; Carol Haroutunian and Donna Deranian, silent auction; and Joyce Guleserian, Ida Kolligian, and Mary Kupjian, raffle prizes.

The Hai Guin Scholarship Association has provided educational assistance to undergraduate and graduate college students of Armenian heritage since 1935. Proceeds from this event fund scholarships to students who are Massachusetts residents, and attend a college in the continental United States. Candidates must have completed one year at the school for which the scholarship is requested. Scholarships awarded are based on merit and need. The attendance of this program and community support allows the Hai Guin Scholarship Association to continue its mission.

Applications are available upon request by writing to: Hai Guin Scholarship Association, 23 Bradley Road, Arlington, MA 02474, Attn: Scholarship Chairman. All application requirements are due by October 25, 2019.

The Hai Guin Scholarship Association’s 2019 Spring Benefit Luncheon will commence at 11:30 a.m. Call Christine Berberian or Andrea Garabedian for tickets.

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MEDFORD, Mass. — Tufts University, the Darakjian-Jafarian Chair in Armenian History, the Department of History, the Armenian Club at Tufts University, and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will sponsor the Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at Tufts on Thursday, April 4, at 7 p.m. The Tufts event will feature a lecture by Dr. Helen C. Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, titled “Medieval Traditions of Commemoration.”

The commemoration and lecture will take place in Goddard Chapel on Tufts’ Medford, MA, campus. A reception will follow in the Coolidge Room in nearby Ballou Hall. Parking is available in the Dowling Garage, 419 Boston Ave., and in designated on-street areas.

In the wake of the successful exhibit “Armenia!,” Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will speak at Tufts on the Armenian belief in the power of memory using works recently on display in the “Armenia!” exhibition at Metropolitan Museum. Medieval monuments offer exceptional testimony to a long tradition of commemoration through colophons in manuscripts and inscriptions on church facades, reliquary containers, textiles, and doors. Commemorative art has preserved memory, cultural tradition, and identity for the Armenians through wars, invasions, and displacement.

Previously she co-curated the Morgan Library and Museum’s 1994 exhibition, “Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts.” At the Metropolitan Museum, she curated “The Glory of Byzantium (843-1261)” in 1997, “Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)” in 2004, and “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition” (7th-9th century) in 2012. Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, presented her with the Order of Saint Sahak–Saint Mesrop at the opening of the exhibition “Armenia!” and the Great House of Cilicia has presented her with the Mesrop Mashtots and Queen Zabel awards and most recently with the “Spirit of Armenia.”

More information about the lecture is available by contacting NAASR at hq@naasr.org.

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LINCOLN, Neb. — Lex Najarian was crowned as Miss Nebraska USA in January 2019 and now is preparing to compete in the Miss USA pageant while promoting health-related causes dear to her heart.

Najarian grew up in very sports-oriented environment because of her father and uncles’ early careers in football. She said, “I thought that I wanted to be a professional tennis player for a very long time. With sports being so prevalent in my life and my uncles’ and dad’s success it seemed achievable. I played tennis for about 12 years, from the time I was 4 to 16. I played in high school and loved it.” Born in Western Springs, Illinois, Alexis Nicole Najarian grew up in Connecticut and went to New Canaan High School there.

However, she thought she was better suited for track when she got to the age to apply to colleges. She switched to become a high jumper and a triple jumper for the track team and just played tennis for fun.

She modeled briefly when living in Connecticut and took a gap year after graduating high school in 2012, intending to model in New York City. She did some local work in Connecticut and did some shoots for a yoga and fitness company in New York. However, nothing really came of it, she said, “because I decided I wasn’t really that interested in it at that time of my life.”

She was working part time and went to school part time, but after the gap year reapplied to colleges and decided on the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Her track work paid off because she ended up high jumping for one year at the University of Nebraska.

She studied psychology at the university and graduated in 2017. Her goal, she said, is to use her background for sport psychology. She said, “I would love to someday own my own gym, with a holistic approach to athletics, and incorporate sports nutrition and sports psychology into the physical training aspects of becoming elite in your sport.” In addition to a sports psychologist and sports nutritionist, she would hire coaches specialized in various sports, and help high school athletes from about 15 to 19 years old, to hone their skills so that they could compete at the college level.

She said that she wants to bring the great staff support for training, nutrition, injury prevention and everything that goes into the mental side of a sport that colleges like the University of Nebraska provide their athletes to the high school level since there is a lack of knowledge and resources there.

Najarian had never entered a pageant before the Miss Nebraska contest but did continue to do some modeling while at the university. About three years ago, she said, a friend of hers told her about the Buckle, a men’s and women’s clothing store based in Kearny, Neb., about two hours west of Lincoln. She interviewed there to become an online model and was also asked to be a fit model. She went twice a week to Kearny to do this for about a year and a half, and only recently at the end of October 2018 stopped working for them. She also has occasionally done some modeling and photoshoots for pageants.

One of Najarian’s friends had competed a few years earlier in a pageant and suggested it to her as a great platform through which to develop an online training and fitness business. This made sense to Lex so although there were only a few months before the pageant weekend she decided to enter it. Not only did she win the title but she also received the Overall Interview Award and Most Photogenic Award. She is now getting ready to compete for the title of Miss USA 2019.

Najarian on her paternal side comes from a well-known Armenian family originally from Kharpert (Harput). Her great-great-grandfather, Lazar Najarian (1860-1953), donated $20,000 in 1952 from the US via the Armenian General Benevolent Union to help buy a building in Aleppo. This became the site of the AGBU Lazar Najarian School in 1954. It was turned into a high school in 1959 and renamed as the AGBU Lazar Najarian-Calouste Gulbenkian Central High School, and it continues its mission to the present.

In 1905, Lazar’s son, Garabed Lazarus (1884-1940), came to the United States. Garabed and his wife Siran moved to Oakland, Calif., where they had three boys. The middle son, John Sarkis (born in 1927), became a famous surgeon.

Lex explained: “My grandfather ended up becoming a transplant surgeon and became interested in the medical field because his father was very sick when he was growing up and he passed away at a young age. And this led my grandfather to go to the University of California Berkeley. He played football there and he also studied medicine.” He became a pioneer in kidney, pancreas and liver transplants. He married a nursing student of Swedish descent and after having four sons moved to Minnesota, where he served as chief of surgery for the University of Minnesota Medical School for many years.

All four boys played football in college and then professionally. Lex’s oldest uncle Jon was a linebacker for the Chicago Bears for a little while and stayed in Chicago to become involved in the stock market and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Lex’s father Peter is the youngest of the four siblings, and after playing football, including with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Minnesota Vikings and Sacramento Surge, moved to Chicago and started trading stocks with Jon in the early 1990s. They started several financial companies together and sold the online brokerage firm TradeMonster to Etrade in 2016 for $750 million. Both brothers are contributors to CNBC on the “Fast Money” halftime show and the “Fast Money” financial investing show in the evenings.

Uncles David and Paul Najarian owned a Popeye’s Chicken franchise in southern Minneapolis for many years, which has been sold now. Paul passed away from ALS in 2014 after a three-year battle. David now owns a gym in Oak Park Heights, Minn.

Lex had various Armenian friends as well as relatives while growing up in Connecticut. She said that while her grandmother was 100 percent Swedish the only Swedish dish she would make was Swedish meatballs. She learned Armenian recipes from her mother-in-law and always made dolma, paklava and various other Armenian foods. Lex said, “We would always have Armenian food at family gatherings.” Lex’s uncle David and her aunt have a restaurant in Minnesota where they are trying to incorporate some Armenian recipes, according to Lex.

In Nebraska, unlike Connecticut, she said there are very few Armenians. Lex said, “I don’t think I have come across very many at all during my time here. I have lived in Lincoln for about six years. Any time I see somebody with the last name ending in -yan or -ian, I always ask, are you Armenian. I always look for those.” She added, “I am really happy and proud to be part of a community that is so proud of our culture.”

As far as Lex knows, no one in her family has traveled to the Republic of Armenia. She said, “I would love to visit Armenia. I would love to bring everyone in my family and make it a big family trip. We have had two or three family reunions in the past with my dad, brothers and grandparents. It would be a really cool thing to have an Armenian family reunion in Armenia.”

In a few months, Najarian will go compete at Miss USA, the national pageant. If she were to win, she would give her Miss Nebraska title to her runner-up, and if not, keep it for a full year. As Miss Nebraska, she began to focus on spreading awareness of Lyme disease, she said, “because I am now realizing how big my voice is and how big of an audience I have. My mom suffered from Lyme disease. She has had it for about 20 years now but was only diagnosed 3 years ago when we moved to Minnesota. I shifted gears because I realized that while I have my whole life to pursue everything I want to do in fitness and health, this is a critical year where I can make a real difference for the Lyme disease community by advocating for proper diagnoses and treatment processes.”

She said that the pageant process might be difficult but, she said, “We have all chosen to enter these competitions so I think that it is just a matter of being mentally prepared. We all know we are going to be judged and it is very subjective judging. Some think skinny is beautiful, some people think strong is beautiful, others think having more body fat is beautiful. I think it is up for us as women to do whatever we feel is healthy and beautiful and makes us feel good. It is up to each individual to decide to be strong enough to accept the results no matter what. Of course it is easier said than done.”

She had been working as a sales associate for Orangetheory Fitness in South Lincoln, Neb. after graduating the university but in February decided to take a break to focus fulltime on preparation for the next pageant as well as travel and appearances. She will be speaking to middle school girls at a yoga studio in a few weeks about female empowerment and feeling confident about their bodies. In April she will participate in an autism walk, and has some other events coming up.

She already went to Dallas and Austin Texas for some boot camps and to pick up her gowns for Miss USA in late January and early February, and at the end of March has another such camp. There, she does mock interviews, reads about current events, pop culture and US history, and practices walking and photo shoots. It is run by WME-IMG (William Morris Endeavor-International Management Group), a talent management group which puts on the national pageant. The VanBros organization helps prepare all the candidates from six states including Nebraska for the latter, as well as runs their state pageants.

The post Miss Nebraska Lex Najarian Vies for Miss USA 2019 appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

PASADENA, Calif. — A monumental and moving concert by the Lark Musical Society, featuring Johannes Brahms magnum opus, took place on Saturday, March 2, at the Ambassador Auditorium, under the auspices of the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA) and dedicated to the memory of Dr. Mihran Agbabian.

Conducted by the Vatsche Barsoumian, the program, titled “A Promise of Hope,” centered around Brahms’s German Requiem, a 19th century classical masterpiece and was performed by the Lark Mastersingers, the Lark Orchestra and soloists Garineh Avakian (mezzo-soprano), Suzanne Waters (soprano), and Edward Levy (baritone). The composition, written in German, was composed by Brahms between 1865 and 1868 at the ripe age of 30, and was a critical work that launched his professional career as an influential composer.

The theme of hope and comfort for the living was relevantly timed with the advent of Easter as the libretto conveyed passages from the Bible’s old and new testaments, compiled by Brahms himself. The religious atmosphere heightened the spiritual ambiance of the evening as Gwen Gibson, pastor of the HRock Church, which holds services in the Ambassador Auditorium, opened the program’s remarks.

“This is our home and it is our delight to share the stage with Lark Musical Society,” said Gibson of the Ambassador Auditorium, referred to as the “Carnegie Hall of the West.” “As a multi-generational and multi-ethnic church, it is our pleasure to host this performance.”

Kenneth Kevorkian, chairman of the organizing committee, expressed gratitude for the audience’s attendance, while reflecting on the recent passing of Agbabian. As co-founder of the American University of Armenia, Agbabian was a dedicated individual who generously gave to the Armenian people, from the homeland — establishing its first Western style academic institution — all the way to California, where he effectively participated and impacted myriad cultural, religious and humanitarian organizations.

“We are saddened by the loss of our former board member,” said Kevorkian. “He was a guiding inspiration for all of us and we dedicate tonight’s concert to him and his memory.”

He thanked the Lark Musical Society and highlighted its accomplishments and advancements over the last three decades under the direction of its humble founder, Vatsche Barousmian, “a man who never wants to be recognized.”

Following the opening prayer delivered by Reverend Vatche Ekmekjian, pastor of the Immanuel Armenian Congregational Church, the audience was enlivened by the sacred pieces of Brahms’s “German Requiem,” as well as the German composer’s two other well-known pieces, “Song of Fate” and “Alto Rhapsody,” that also seek to capture the human spirit. A pre-concert lecture by Doris Melkonian, who holds a Master of Arts in Musicology from UCLA, shed light on the inner workings of the compositions as well as Brahms’s deep interest in Martin Luther’s German Bible, which translated the holy scriptures into the vernacular and its influence on the young pianist and composer.

Throughout the seven movements, which ranged from dramatic moments to softer ones, Brahms thread alternating verses from the Bible that touched upon death, life and life after death. The catalyst of the creation was the eternal rest of his mother and may have also been rooted in the passing of his mentor, composer Robert Schumann, nine years earlier.

“It is an incarnation of the promise of eternal life that is the anchor of our faith in the living Lord, Jesus Christ,” said Barsoumian, who is the founder and director of the Lark Musical Society. “As brass hits brass and fire engulfs fire in the Middle East and as man’s inhumanity to man once again unfolds in abundance, we are again reminded of how trivial is all earthly glory and how pitiful is man in his pursuit of withering earthly pleasures.”

The Lark Musical Society was established 30 years ago when Barsoumian invited a group of Armenian-American musicians, teachers and community leaders to connect their community with superior artistic programs and performances. The vision of its initial mission has flourished over the years and the organization now consists of educational opportunities, concert series, choirs, publications and a conservatory, in addition to its large-scale performances, which in the past have included Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, Anton Bruckner’s tripartite Te Deum, and Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. The joint AMAA/Lark Musical Society concert has become an annual tradition.

Attracting talented musicians of all backgrounds, the Lark Musical Society, which has staged more than 300 concerts for the general public, maintains meaningful ties with its performers, in particular Dr. Garineh Avakian, Assistant Professor in Voice and Choral Music at Pierce College, who performed “Alto Rhapsody” as a soloist, hitting every emotional note.

“Being the first graduate of the Lark Conservatory, it was a great honor to be asked by Baron Vatsche to perform in such a setting,” said the award-winning Avakian, whose students and colleagues from Pierce College attended the performance. “Singing Brahms is both soothing and strengthening and it was a pleasure to give back to a community that has helped raise, educate and support me throughout my years of study.”

The stirring performances of the chorus, soloists and orchestra took the audience on a soulful journey that concluded in a peaceful and transcendental manner.

“Our committee gracefully dedicates this performance to all who have lived and witnessed the faith that so magnificently transforms their being,” said Kevorkian, a member of the Board of Directors for the AMAA, a non-profit charitable organization that serves as the missionary arm of the Armenian Evangelical churches worldwide. “This concert was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had and as the music permeated my body and soul, I felt as if I was going to heaven on the wings of an angel.”

The post Lark Pays Tribute to Agbabian with Brahms Concert appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

To the Editor,

Months after “A Statement from the Diocesan Council Regarding the Diocesan Development Plan Proposal” (August 14, 2018, Mirror-Spectator) was issued, James Kalustian, chairman of the Diocesan Council of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), still refuses to release a follow up statement concerning the status of the Diocesan Center, despite calls for greater transparency.

At the upcoming Diocesan Assembly in Massachusetts in May, Mr. Kalustian will be publicly asked to resign and/or face a vote of no confidence. Mr. Kalustian, who is up for re-election in 2021, will no longer be able to serve without fear of term limits, as he has done since 2001. A “term limits” proposal has been submitted to the Proposals Committee, which would only allow for a Diocesan Council member to serve for two consecutive four-year terms. The term limits proposal will undoubtedly pass and in due time will be implemented.

It is clear the tone of Mr. Kalustian’s almost two-decades’ run on the Diocesan Council has been of poor communication skills, a lack of transparency, an inability to unite, the failure to properly maintain the Diocesan Center (as it is being held up by “Scotch tape” as he publicly stated last year), colossal failures in hiring executive directors, alienating prominent benefactors from New Jersey and an isolationist management style.  One of the most troubling aspects of Mr. Kalustian in his capacity on the Diocesan Council, is also the manner in which he openly belittled the former Primate, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, both publicly and privately.

Quite simply, Mr. Kalustian is out of touch with large segments of the Diocese, from the youth to the average parishioner to even key benefactors. Under Mr. Kalustian, the morale of the Diocesan staff spirals towards a bottomless pit (or shall I say the Diocesan Bookstore as Mr. Kalustian proposed last May) as they face uncertain times and are on a rudderless ship. With Mr. Kalustian leading the Diocese, we have clearly veered off the course set by St. Vartan when he pronounced to his valiant soldiers “We hold the Holy Gospel as our father and the Mother Church of Armenia as our mother.” There is clearly no indication based on Mr. Kalustian’s undistinguished financial track record as treasurer (six years) and chairman that he can remedy the tragic financial situation of the Diocese without the major fire sale he so desperately desires.

Mr. Kalustian has twice been unable to gather support for monetizing the Diocesan Center, first in conjunction with Moushegh “Michael” Harutunian and Kevork Toroyan a few years ago, and again due to his embarrassing blunders at the Diocesan Assembly in New York in 2018. Mr. Kalustian’s divisive attempt to sell the Diocesan Center without it even being an agenda item at last year’s Diocesan Assembly is a textbook example of his bewildering “leadership” style. Will an accurate report on the physical condition of the Diocesan Center as well as the failed attempt to sell the Diocesan Center be included on this year’s agenda or will Mr. Kalustian parade out more wolves in sheep’s clothing in front of the Diocesan Delegates? “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” (“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”).

Mr. Kalustian, as Bill Parcells, the former head football coach of your beloved New England Patriots, once said, “You are what your record says you are.”

Rebecca Bakalian Hachikian

Los Angeles

The post Letter to the Editor: ‘You Are What Your Record Says You Are’ appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Eminent Byzantinist and historian Dr. Speros Vryonis, Jr. passed away on March 11 peacefully in his sleep at the age of 90.

Vryonis wrote extensively on Byzantine, Balkan and Greek history. Secondarily, he contributed to the advancement of Armenology through his research in Byzantine history, his unwavering stand against shoddy scholarship and the distortion of history, and his personal participation in the institutional development of Armenian studies.

Incongruously, or at least unexpectedly, combining a Southern twang and courtesy with ancient Greek aphorisms, Vryonis was witty and gregarious. He had the lean physique of a man who used to enjoy boxing and playing basketball. Vryonis admired both physical and mental prowess. He was loyal to a fault to his friends and his students. I had the honor and pleasure of being one of the latter in graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was a popular lecturer. An eloquent speaker, he had a great sense of humor, sprinkling his lectures with jokes, including Nasreddin Hoja anecdotes, and spotlighting some of the eccentric figures who pop up here and there in Byzantine history.

He was born in Memphis, Tenn. in 1928, where his Cephalonian father ran his bakery and meat plant. Though there were few Greek families there, Vryonis became interested in Greek history, and graduated Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in 1950, majoring in ancient history and Classics. He went to Harvard University for his doctorate on Byzantine history, which he received in 1956, and later taught there. At Harvard, he was a colleague and friend of Drs. Avedis Sanjian (1921-1995), a specialist in Armenian studies, and Ottomanist Stanford Shaw (1930-2006).

When UCLA began expanding its Near Eastern program, it first recruited Vryonis, and then Sanjian and Shaw. Vryonis came in 1960. He served as the director of the G. E. von Gunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies in 1972-75 and 1979-82. Vryonis held the Chair of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Athens from 1976 to 1979. He left UCLA for New York University to become the first director of the Alexander S. Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies from 1988 to 1993.

Vryonis did post-graduate work at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington and later provided advice for it on Byzantine studies as a Senior Fellow from 1985 to 1991. He served from 1996 to 2000 as director of the Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism near Sacramento, which was named after Vryonis’ eldest son after the latter’s death in 1986. The library was transferred to Sacramento State University in 2002 after the closure of the center. Vryonis was an indefatigable collector of books and periodicals, and periodically sold or donated his collections as far afield as Australia (to the National Library of Australia) .

His countless honors include being chosen as Fulbright Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Fellow of the American Medieval Academy, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. In 2007, Vryonis was appointed American Hellenic Institute Foundation Senior Fellow for Hellenism and for Greek and Turkish Studies. Vryonis had given numerous scholarly lectures around the world, and organized many conferences. Without a doubt, he was a scholar of the first rank who attained world renown.

He published a survey titled Byzantium and Europe in 1968 which still is considered an excellent introduction to this topic. Perhaps his most famous book, his magnum opus, is The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (1971), which is now considered a classic in the field. In it, Vryonis describes the process by which Turkic invaders Islamicized and Turkified a prosperous and populous Hellenized Asia Minor. Conversely, he shows the influence of Byzantine culture on the succeeding Turkish culture. While the book specifically focuses on the fate of the Hellenized population of Asia Minor, supporting evidence from Armenian history is frequently provided, and many of the destructive or assimilatory forces described also affected Armenians.

Aside from his own research, Vryonis gave direction to scholarship through a critical examination of the works of others. One important example of such analysis is the monograph entitled Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume I.  Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1808,…: A Critical Analysis. In it, Vryonis marshalled considerable evidence indicating that Shaw’s work is derivative of a limited number of secondary sources and is replete with factual errors, contradictions, and the apparent fabrication of historical data. Shaw’s work is also marred by the anachronistic insertion of modern Turkish nationalistic viewpoints. Aside from the light this monograph sheds on Ottoman historiography, it also points out specific problems in Shaw’s presentation of Armenian history. These include contradictory information on the origin of the Ottoman Armenian millet, and the unfounded claim that Armenians attempted to usurp Kurdish territories in the 16th century.

Vryonis, perhaps more outspoken than even professors of Armenian origin at UCLA concerning Shaw’s biased approach – which among other things helped create a school of denial of the Armenian Genocide, paid a price for this in his relations with UCLA faculty and administration.

Toward the latter part of his career, Vryonis began to publish more on issues of modern and even contemporary history. He was worried in particular about the massive distortion of history supported by the Turkish government. In response, he published The Turkish State and History: Clio Meets the Grey Wolf (1991). His volume The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul (2005) is a meticulously documented work on the Turkish pogroms which targeted Greeks as well as Armenians and Jews in Istanbul.

Aside from concern about Turkish state intervention in academia, he had a second fear, which he expressed in the September-October issue of Greek America Magazine: “I should add that many Greeks and Greek Americans have lost their sense of history, of whence they came, of who they are, and of what they are becoming.”

In 1993, Vryonis’ students published a two-volume festschrift in his honor: To Hellenikon: Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis, Jr. Volume II included Armeniaca among its essay topics.

Vryonis played an active personal role in the establishment and support of Armenian studies in the United States. He spoke in favor of the establishment of a chair of Armenian studies at UCLA in the early 1960s, and was on the search committee that brought Avedis Sanjian, soon to become Grigor Narekatsi Professor of Armenian Studies, to UCLA in 1965. He was on Richard Hovannisian’s doctoral committee and was the chairman of the search committee which selected him as the first holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA in 1987. He served on the doctoral committees of several other students in Armenian studies. Over a period of nearly half a century, Vryonis spoke at numerous Armenian functions throughout the United States and abroad about various issues of Armenian history, including the genocide.

Dr. Vryonis is survived by his wife Badri, sons Demetrios (Victoria) and Nikolas, grandchildren Sophia and Alexander, and other relatives, and was preceded in death by his eldest son Speros Basil. He passed peacefully in his sleep on March 11 at the age of 90. His funeral service took place at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Sacramento on March 20.

The post Eminent Byzantinist Dr. Speros Vryonis, Jr., Supporter of Armenian Studies, Dies appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

WATERTOWN — The Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) hired its first fulltime executive director in November 2018. In that post, Rachel Onanian Nadjarian is attempting some major changes in direction for the organization.

Nadjarian has extensive experience in nonprofit management, marketing and advertising as well as decades of involvement in the Armenian community. She related that though her mother was not Armenian, she raised her two daughters to be involved in Armenian affairs. Nadjarian went to Armenian Saturday school at Holy Trinity Armenian Church in Cambridge, Mass., and later taught Sunday school at the same church. She joined the Armenian General Benevolent Union’s Daron Dance Ensemble and, following its director Apo Ashjian when he founded a new ensemble, became one of the original members of the Sayat Nova Dance Company in 1986.

The only dancer of the company who could not speak fluent Armenian, she decided her senior year at Wellesley College, while as an economics and sociology major she was preparing to work on Wall Street, to travel to Armenia. Prof. Philip Kohl was preparing for an archaeological dig in Armenia and on the spur of the moment Nadjarian decided to join it for seven weeks in the summer of 1992. She became comfortable in Eastern Armenian during this trip.

She began a career in advertising in Cambridge, Mass. but after two years switched to working for the Museum of Science in Boston, and was inspired by working in a nonprofit environment. Consequently, she did the nonprofit program from 1995 to 1997 to earn a Master’s in Business Administration from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and then went to work on a $132-million fundraising campaign for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was, she said, at the time the largest ever of any institution. She said, “I felt I had learned fundraising in probably the best environment in which I could ever learn — major gifts, gift recording, donor relations and how it is done right.”

After running the career center for MBAs at Boston University’s School of Management, she went to Crimson and Brown, running a sales team on career events. Due to her husband getting jobs in Michigan and then San Francisco she moved several times, focusing on their children, while doing consulting projects, often for Armenian organizations, for several years. She moved again in 2004 to New York, where she lived until 2015, with the exception of one year in Boston. The last two years in New York she worked as the director of advancement of a private school and helped create their development department, but after a move to the Washington D.C. area, she returned to consulting, with her Armenian clients including the Armenian Tree Project, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and the IDeA Foundation. She also got involved in the Armenian Relief Society as a volunteer from 2013 to 2017.

Nadjarian presented her varied work as good background for her position with AIWA. She said, “I am used to wearing many hats, dealing with a lot of ambiguity, and creating structure with brand and mission so it makes sense.”

Nadjarian served as a volunteer on AIWA’s board starting in June 2017. AIWA had hired Jennifer Philips, a part-time executive director, for the first time, from 2016 to 2018. When Philips left, Nadjarian was already pondering the role of AIWA. She said, “In that year or so I saw a lot of opportunity that was being overlooked, a little bit of slowing down or inertia, complacency maybe. I decided on my trip to Armenia that summer [after the Velvet Revolution] to do my own research and investigation on what Armenian women were thinking…I felt we are at a turning point for the Armenian world and I need to go and listen to what women there have to say about anything — where they are, the future, what they are working on.”

Nadjarian said she felt there was an incredible amount of work being done in Armenia about which most people abroad are not aware. She concluded, “I felt very inspired and said I think AIWA is in a very good position to change the conversation, the platform, the playing field on which Armenian women are connected around the world.”

Nadjarian urged that the AIWA director position be expanded to full-time, and offered herself for the post. She said that first of all, “We have to simultaneously….recreate the brand a little, recreate the conversation, the narrative, the message, and engage more women around the world. As we do that, we are going to start to see reach, engagement and membership increase and then the fundraising strategy will come from that.”

Nadjarian’s initial focus will be on the vision and the message and their dissemination. She already has reworded AIWA’s original goals “in a 2019 way as opposed to a 1991 way,” and her goal is to redo the entire platform, not just the website.

To redo the platform, she is assembling a vision team of 8-9 young people from around the world who will be led by a UX (User Experience) designer in Armenia. They are not AIWA members but, Nadjarian said, are engaged and active users of technology who have a lot to say about what they think Armenian women want and what the challenges to them are.

Most immediately, Nadjarian has begun a listening tour to go to all of AIWA affiliates as well as cities with Armenian populations with no official affiliates, and to Russia and Armenia, to hear the needs, aspirations, challenges and opportunities of Armenian women. She said that the information gathered will help decide how to redirect the efforts of AIWA. She also is engaging new people and spreading the word about AIWA.

Armenia will be her final stop. There used to be an affiliate there which never got going but now Nadjarian feels there is a good possibility for collaborating with the My Step Foundation of Anna Hakobyan, wife of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. AIWA always worked with the American University of Armenia (AUA) and the Women’s Support Center, but, Nadjarian said, now she wants to deepen AIWA’s work beyond just providing funding.

Among the programmatic areas being considered for the near future is a global mentorship program, an examination of domestic violence on a deeper level, not only in Armenia but in other Armenian communities around the world, and a conference in Armenia next year. Nadjarian is putting together a conference committee now which she wants to “work on a very different form of interaction among people, that will not only architect conversations but move those conversations to the next place, which could be architecting solutions or creating content which could be the basis of change for the future.” The conference, she said, would be an opportunity to bring the new membership to Armenia.

The membership of AIWA at present is under 500. Nadjarian finds this to be far too low for a global network of Armenian women. There are Armenian women’s Facebook sites with much larger memberships. She believes it should reach the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Membership costs $50 annually or $1,000 for a lifetime. Nadjarian is focusing on bringing in younger people, and says, “So far, everyone wants to be a part of it. They are very excited about what is happening. In Armenia too, there are many young women, including the web graduates of our entrepreneurship program at AUA, which we founded many years ago, who are coming forward, as well as our scholarship recipients of the past.”

Nadjarian is also forming committees and subcommittees at various levels of engagement to bring people in on particular projects in which they have a vested interest.

AIWA, under Nadjarian, has a number of top goals for Armenian women. She said, “I would like an Armenian woman to be able to have access to absolutely anything that she needs and wants that is going to help her personally and professionally, with her own wellness, with her ability to economically advance and to be engaged as a citizen in her own awareness of her rights.”

Aside from access to information and opportunities, Nadjarian wants to break down barriers between Armenian women. “In building solidarity, we need to recognize that we have a long history of seeing each other as aligned by where we were born, where we socialize, where we immigrated from, what our education level is, what our income level is, and where we reside,” she explained.

The Velvet Revolution in Armenia, Nadjarian said, provides “shining examples of what can be accomplished through civic engagement…Everyone is paying attention to this movement in Armenia…The Diaspora has been criticized, rightfully so, for telling Armenia how to do things. We have a lot to learn from them about this revolution.” She pointed out that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation just announced a gender quota and though that might have been forced, the truth will become clear if everyone embraces this approach.

AIWA is in conversation with Girls of Armenia Leadership Soccer (GOALS), a program started in 2015 which began the first women’s soccer league in Armenia in 2016. AIWA would like to work together to bring Armenian girls in soccer in the US into this program. Nadjarian pointed out that “this is an example of something done in Armenia that shows a ripe opportunity to connect outside of Armenia and we should be the connecting tissue for that.” Another possible avenue of cooperation is working with the Girls in Tech chapter in Armenia, whose managing director, Seda Papoyan, is a graduate of a program sponsored by AIWA at AUA.

AIWA will continue to work at the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization with the Commission on the Status of Women, where AIWA holds five seats. This year’s priority themes include “social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.”

Fundraising will be necessary to achieve many of AIWA’s long-term goals. Nadjarian said that the diasporan gala or banquet culture is both a blessing and a curse, noting, “There is a lot to be said for a celebratory event. They can be great but inevitably leave people out.”

She stressed that “from a fundraising point of view, the Armenian world has never really been good at it…We have this understanding that if I shake hands with someone who gives a million dollars, then I am a fundraiser. But really good fundraising is a mindset, how you see relationships. They take time and they take building trust and transparency.”

Nadjarian said that she is treating AIWA like a professional nonprofit, and building it so that in two or three years it will be running how a model nonprofit should be run. She noted that her board is very supportive. Nadjarian said, “Armenians are not good at accountability. Nobody wants to be the fall guy. I would rather have the accountability and be in the hotseat so that I can make real progress, rather than …inertia, hiding behind the board that makes the decisions.”

The 12-person AIWA board itself may undergo change soon, with a number of open seats coming up as older members withdraw. Right now it is all American, with a majority on the East Coast, but, Nadjarian said, in the future it may become international.

The post New Director Nadjarian Sees Global Role for AIWA appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

BELMONT, Mass. — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is sponsoring an essay contest for undergraduate students centering around the transformative power of education at the core of NAASR’s mission and the life of Dr. Vartan Gregorian, after whom NAASR’s new world headquarters building in Belmont, will be named when it opens in November 2019.

“Have you had an extraordinary relationship with a professor that changed your life? We want to hear from you,” said Sarah Ignatius, NAASR executive director, in encouraging undergraduates from all over the country to participate.

“Central to Dr. Gregorian’s life is his dedication to educational advancement and the pursuit of knowledge, just as these principles are central to NAASR’s mission,” said Yervant Chekijian, Chairman of NAASR’s Board of Directors. “We look forward to hearing from students how they have felt inspired in the same way.”

The contest is open to any full-time undergraduate student in the United States, whether or not of Armenian descent. Entrants must compose an original essay in the English language of 750 to 1,000 words about an important relationship he or she forged with a teacher or professor and how that relationship served to inspire and to make a fundamental difference in his or her life. The essay need not specifically mention NAASR or Vartan Gregorian.

The entry deadline is June 15, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. Submissions must be by email to hq@naasr.org, with the subject line “Essay Submission.” In the body of the email, entrants must include name, age, degree program, and school as well as the essay. Entrants should attach proof of undergraduate enrollment, such as a dated photo of a current student ID.

The winners will be announced in the fall of 2019. The first-place winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize, plus travel and lodging in the Cambridge area on November 2, where he or she will read his or her essay at NAASR’s 65th Anniversary Gala and Grand Opening of NAASR’s headquarters, to be named the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, in Belmont, fulfilling the request of the building’s principal benefactors, Edward and Pamela Avedisian of Lexington. The second-place winner will receive a $500 prize, and the third-place winner will receive a $250 prize.

Founded in 1955, NAASR is one of the world’s leading resources for advancing Armenian Studies and building community worldwide to preserve and enrich Armenian culture, history, and identity for future generations. NAASR supports scholars with research grants, academic programming, and research assistance in its 28,000-volume rare book Armenian Studies library, connects their scholarly findings with a broad general public, worked to found the first chairs of Armenian Studies at Harvard and UCLA, and has gone on to support other endowed positions, which now exist at 13 universities in the United States.

Dr. Gregorian, who is currently pPresident of the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York, was born in Tabriz, Iran, receiving his elementary education in Iran and his secondary education at Collège Arménian in Beirut, Lebanon. He graduated with honors from Stanford University and was awarded a PhD in history and humanities from Stanford. He was appointed the Tarzian Professor of Armenian and Caucasian History and professor of South Asian History at the University of Pennsylvania, and then served as president of the New York Public Library, which includes a network of four research libraries and 83 branch libraries. He was then appointed the 16th president of Brown University.

For questions regarding the essay contest, email hq@naasr.org.  Learn more about NAASR at www.naasr.org.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Boston-area classical music lovers are in for a treat. On Sunday, March 31, the classical VEM Ensemble will perform at 1 p.m., at the Holy Trinity Armenian Church at 145 Brattle Street, at a concert cosponsored by the Tekeyan Cultural Association and Holy Trinity Church.

The concert is part of the group’s North American tour with stops in Detroit (March 27), Montreal (March 29), Glendale (April 27) and Altadena, Calif. (May 19), organized with the Tekeyan Cultural Association of the United States and Canada.

A new musical piece based on the poetry of Vahan Tekeyan will receive its premiere during this tour and musical masterpieces by Gomidas, Khachaturian, and Western classical composers will comprise the rest of the program. The concerts are sponsored by the Tekeyan Cultural Association of the United States and Canada, with support from the UCLA Armenian Music program at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

The VEM Ensemble consists of the VEM Graduate String Quartet, in residence at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and a singer, currently mezzo-soprano Danielle Segen. VEM means “rock” in Armenian, symbolizing the strength and power of this ensemble to bring to live music written by prominent and emerging Armenian composers.

The ensemble is the cornerstone of the newly created Armenian Music Program at UCLA, which, thanks to generous donor support as well as artistic guidance of the Lark Musical Society, endeavors to raise awareness and celebrate the richness and diversity of Armenian musical tradition. As part of their studies, members of the quartet strive to cultivate an appreciation and passion for Armenian music throughout the community through musical performances, music education, outreach services, and a series of collaborations with composers to create new works dedicated to and enriching the Armenian cultural heritage.

The VEM Quartet, coached by its Artistic Director Movses Pogossian, has worked with such musicians as Kim Kashkashian, Seth Knopp, David Starobin, Nickolas Kitchen, and Tigran Mansurian. In his review of their performance at the Incontri in Terra di Sierra Festival in Tuscany, Italy, critic Laurence Vittes writes: “The evening’s most memorable music was made by the VEM Quartet…who laid out Eduard Mirzoyan’s String Quartet with a feline, subtle grace that touched hearts with its gentle melodic content and long-lined eloquence.”

Artashes Kartalyan: Tekeyan Triptych

An exciting world premiere to be presented during this 2019 tour is of the recently completed Tekeyan Triptych by Artashes Kartalyan, commissioned by the Tekeyan Cultural Association in 2018. This is a remarkable composition structured around three poems by Vahan Tekeyan (1875-1945), widely regarded as the “Prince of Armenian Poetry.” Its poetic choices, focusing on two love poems followed by a meditation on what one leaves behind, combined with intricate musicality, promises to make the Tekeyan Triptych one of the composer’s masterpieces.

In addition to the Triptych, recognized masterworks by Gomidas upon his 150^th anniversary of birth, Khachaturian, Mirzoyan, Hovhannes, and Schubert will be performed. The VEM Ensemble during its March trip will provide outreach performances at the AGBU Alex and Marie Manoogian School (Detroit), St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School (Watertown, MA), and in Montreal.

VEM was established in 2013 by artistic director Prof. Movses Pogossian. Pogossian made his American debut as a violinist with the Boston Pops in 1990, about which Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote: “There is freedom in his playing, but also taste and discipline. It was a fiery, centered, and highly musical performance…” Prizewinner of several important competitions, including the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Competition, he extensively performed as soloist and recitalist in Europe, Northern America, and Asia. He was one of the 2016/17 Artists in Residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He is Artistic Director of the acclaimed Dilijan Chamber Music Series, currently in its 14th season.

Champion of new music, Pogossian has premiered over 70 works. In Los Angeles, Movses Pogossian frequently performs on Monday Evening Concerts, and is a recipient of the 2011 Forte Award, given for outstanding contributions to the promotion of new music. Pogossian’s discography includes the recently released Complete Sonatas and Partitas by J. S. Bach (New Focus Recordings), as well as solo violin CDs “Blooming Sounds” and “In Nomine,” and Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments,” with soprano Tony Arnold.

Since earning his advanced degrees from the Komitas Conservatory in Armenia and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Moscow, Pogossian has held teaching positions at Duquesne, Bowling Green, Wayne State, and SUNY Buffalo Universities. Deeply committed to musical education, Movses Pogossian is currently Professor of Violin at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He proudly participates in the Music for Food project, which raises awareness of the hunger problem faced by a large percent of the populations and gives the opportunity to experience the powerful role music can play as a catalyst for change.

VEM violinist Ji Eun Hwang was born in Korea and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across United States and South Korea. She began her music studies at an early age and studied in the Preparatory school of Korea National University of Art and in Seoul National University with a Bachelor’s degree in violin performance. After then, she studied with an Artist Diploma in violin performance at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University with Professor Mark Kaplan and Ik-Hwan Bae with a full scholarship. She attended Tanglewood Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Texas Music Festival with full scholarships and Pontlevoy music festival in France. Her musical development has been furthered in masterclasses with Mihaela Martin, Patinka Kopec, Samuel Rhodes, Yael Weiss, Ani Kavafian, Pamela Frank, Mauricio Fuks, and Lucie Robert. In the past year, she has been the featured performer with many solo and chamber recitals and won several violin competitions. She played at the Yurim promising artist recital and the Young San young artist recital, and performed with the Gwangju Symphony Orchestra and City of Mokpo Symphony Orchestra. Since 2012, she has joined Sejong Soloists as a guest artist and she is a principal violinist of the Sejong City Philharmonic Orchestra. She is currently pursuing a Master of Music in violin performance at Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA with Professor Movses Pogossian.

Aiko Jimena Richter is originally from Baltimore, Maryland and joined VEM in 2018. She has been a fellow at major festivals including the National Orchestral Institute, Domaine Forget Academy, Festival Napa Valley, and Kent/Blossom Music Festival, during which she performed with the Cleveland Orchestra. She is also featured on the 2015 Naxos label recording of Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 as a member of the NOI festival orchestra. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed in masterclasses for Gil Shaham, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Ani Kavafian, Brooklyn Rider, and the Kronos Quartet among others. Aiko earned her B.M. at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as a student of Nicholas DiEugenio and is currently pursuing her M.M. at UCLA with Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian.

Violist Morgan O’Shaughnessey has performed live on RAI Radio 3 at Palazzo Quirinale for the President of the Italian Republic. He has presented several recitals of modern Italian works at Teatro la Fenice in Venice as a part of the festival lo spirito della musica di venezia, as well as recorded an album of the complete chamber music of Gino Gornini in collaboration with the Giorgio Cini Foundation, which was released on the Tactus label. He performs on a fine viola by Vincenzo Cavani di Spilamberto, and a bow by Darrell Hanks of Ashland, Oregon. His extensive discography with legendary producer Sylvia Massy includes string arrangements for Johnny Depp, Rihanna, and Soilwork. He holds a BM from San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied with Jodi Levitz and members of the Kronos Quartet. His other musical interests include the Scottish highland bagpipes, Swedish nyckelharpa, and Quebecois fiddle music. A passionate advocate for community involvment in music and art, O’Shaughnessey is the artistic director for Springsart Series: a non-profit community concert series that produces accomplished regional artists in interactive artistic community events in a yurt deep in the forest near Ashland, Oregon. Visit www.moshalto.com for more information on upcoming concert engagements and album releases.

Jason Pegis, named “a true talent” by Montreal’s Le Devoir, started cello lessons at age 16 and holds a Bachelor’s of Music from Willamette University where he studied with Jason Duckles and Valdine Mishkin, and a Master’s of Music from McGill University where he studied with Matt Haimovitz. While working on his Bachelor’s, he joined the school’s Waller Piano Trio, which made news as the first chamber group from Oregon to become national finalists of the 2014 MTNA Young Artist Chamber Music Competition. He has seen much success in solo competitions as well; in 2013 and 2016 he won the Willamette University Concerto Competitions, and in 2015 winning the Eugene Symphony Young Artist Competition and Outstanding Cellist Award, after which he appeared as a soloist with the orchestra for two outdoor concerts for audiences of thousands. He also received the 2016 Zodiac Music Festival Young Artist Award, numerous instrumental scholarships from Mu Phi Epsilon, grants from the Williamson Foundation for Music, and an 1880 Neuner-Hornsteiner cello loan from the Carlsen Cello Foundation. In 2017, he became a finalist of the McGill Concerto Competition, and held a principal cello position of the McGill Symphony Orchestra. Jason has performed chamber music with artists like Johannes Moser, Axel Strauss, Victor Fournelle-Blain, Neal Stulberg, and Denis Bouriakov. He currently studies with Antonio Lysy in Los Angeles where he has started his Doctorate of Musical Arts and string teaching assistantship at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.

Praised for possessing “extraordinary expressivity, and a beautiful voice” (Long Beach Gazette), Danielle Segen is an emerging talent in the Los Angeles music scene. Danielle earned her Master of Music degree at University of California Los Angeles, where she studied with Juliana Gondek. At UCLA she was seen regularly on the opera stage with past appearances including Prince Charming in “Cendrillon,” Dorabella in “Cosí fan tutte,” and the titular role in both “Tragedy of Carmen” and the West Coast premiere of William Bolcom’s “Lucrezia.”

Equally at home singing new compositions as she is performing from the standard repertoire of opera and art song, Danielle has been sought after to workshop, record, and perform new works. Most recently she collaborated with composer Jeff Kryka to record the theme music for “Traces of the Brush,” a critically acclaimed documentary on world renowned Chinese art historian and calligrapher Fu Shen, directed by Eros Zhao. With the VEM String Quartet Segen has enjoyed international success, performing at the Komitas Chamber Music Hall in Yerevan, Armenia as well as in the Dilijan Chamber Music Series at Zipper Hall. This upcoming year will see Danielle on concert stages across the U.S. and internationally with VEM performing Armenian art song arrangements, as well as world premieres of a new song cycle for mezzo-soprano and string quartet by Artashes Kartalyan and a new string quartet arrangement of Tigran Mansurian’s “Four Hayrens.”

VEM will perform at 1 p.m., Sunday, March 31 cosponsored with Holy Trinity Armenian Church at 145 Brattle St.

For a sample performance, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGXmv8YIyc .

For general questions or tickets, email tcadirector@aol.com.

The post VEM Ensemble to Perform at Holy Trinity Armenian Church on March 31 appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The issues with today’s criminal justice system are human rights issues. On Thursday, April 25, an evening with death row exoneree, Anthony Ray Hinton, will give the community the opportunity to hear his extraordinary story of faith and hope sustained through the darkest times.  The lecture is part of the Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Greater Boston Dr. Michael and Joyce Kolligian Distinguished Speaker Series.

The program will take place at the Charles and Nevart Talanian Cultural Hall, 145 Brattle St., at 7 p.m.

Hinton wrote the captivating memoir, The Sun Does Shine:  How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. Hinton’s book is a New York Times Best Seller and was Oprah’s Book Club Summer 2018 Selection. He will share his story of wrongful conviction, death-row survival and his decades-long journey to exoneration and freedom. Now free after nearly 30 years, Hinton will discuss the changes to the criminal justice system that need to be made to prevent these types of injustices from happening to other innocent people. He will also remind everyone of the power of faith and forgiveness, for in his words, “I’m just trying to be a little tiny light in God’s world.”

The event is open and free to the public. A reception and book signing will follow Mr. Hinton’s talk, and books will be available for purchase. For further information, contact the Church Office.å

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By Michael Melkonian

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

LOS ANGELES — Ara Khatchadourian, a renowned French-Armenian adventurer, extreme sport athlete and mountaineer who climbed the highest mountain in the world, now has his eyes set on a new challenge as he continues to conquer his “next Everest.”

Climbing Mount Everest has not been his only physical achievement.

In 2018, he ran a tri-continent marathon from Marseille to Yerevan. Khatchadourian covered 11 countries, 500 towns, and 2,685 miles in an astonishing time span of 105 days. He ran an incredible 26 miles a day without stopping for a day break. So remarkable was this achievement that he was greeted  by crowds of people in Yerevan, and most notably was commended in person by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1964 to Armenian parents from Erzurum, he grew up in a community that welcomed his Armenian roots. Unfortunately, after finally finding his place in Lebanon as a jeweler, he was forced to leave at age 19 for Marseille due to the escalating Lebanese Civil War.

In France, with almost no money and no knowledge of the French language, Khatchadourian worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week in order to keep his head above water.  Khatchadourian did find solace in Marseille however, as it was home to a large Armenian community and the weather and its surroundings reminded him of his former home in Beirut. It was here that Khatchadourian became more connected to his Armenian roots as he learned Armenians songs and dance from the community there. He also developed his artistry in jewelry, making that his passion and profession.

Khatchadourian made many friends in his new adopted city, and some were very adventurous. When one new friend heard that he had taken up running and completed his first marathon just a few years back at the age of 40, he told Khatchadourian about his upcoming expedition to climb Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe west of Russia’s Caucasus peaks, and invited him to join them. Mont Blanc, in Switzerland, is infamous as climbing fatalities reach nearly 100 per year, with the overall number estimated to be from 6,000 to 8,000, making it the deadliest mountain in the world.

Khatchadourian, a man with no mountaineering experience, but in great physical condition due to his marathon running, took up his offer and embraced the challenge to explore a new horizon. He was taught by a mountaineering expert over three days on how to rock climb, including the basics such as using an ice axe and putting on crampons. After three days of developing the proper skills. Khatchadourian, his friend, and his teacher set out to climb Mont Blanc. After a long and arduous climb, Khatchadourian and his companions reached the peak at 6:30 a.m. and witnessed a breathtakingly beautiful sunrise view. This site inspired Khatchadourian to climb even more mountains, and when he scaled Mt. Ararat before long, he described it as being the “most beautiful and greatest climb I have been a part of.” Khatchadourian then ascended Mt. Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa at 19,341ft.

Next, he set a very personal goal, to climb Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, and he wanted to climb it in 2015 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. To physically and mentally prepare for this grueling undertaking, Khatchadourian trained rigorously and climbed mountains around the world, especially those with high elevations throughout South America and Central Asia. In Spring 2015, Khatchadourian headed off to Everest to begin the ascend with his crew of fellow mountaineers and sherpas. Khatchadourian and his team set out to conquer Everest from its north face due to its greater challenge, a route that is traditionally harder than its southern counterpart, as it has high-altitude base camps, technical climbing, and stronger winds. The Everest climb also included crossing massive crevices on small ladders, with only pieces of rope protecting climbers from falling 10,000 feet into certain death.

“The trick is not to get scared,” Khatchadourian said. “When you get scared you stop, and especially when crossing crevices, such stoppage could be deadly.”

By far the most treacherous part of the climb for mountaineers is when they reach the “death zone,” with an altitude above 25,000 feet. This term was coined by Everest climbers due to its extreme elevation and the knowledge that a person cannot acclimatize to that altitude; humans can only take in 30 percent of the oxygen in the air that they would take at sea level. Most of the deaths on Everest happen in this zone, with almost all the dead bodies remaining on the mountain, as it would require a herculean effort to remove them at that altitude. This provides a grisly reminder to mountaineers on how treacherous the climb truly is and makes some climbers even want to turn back. When asked how he felt seeing bodies lying along the trail as he got closer to the summit, Khatchadourian gave an encouraging response.

“To see the bodies line the trail like that gave me even more motivation to reach the summit, as I was not just doing this for myself and my people, but also for my fellow mountaineers who never made it,” he said.

The ‘”death zone” is also known for its extreme, unbearable cold, causing frostbite to many including Khatchadourian who later lost the tops of his two big toes to it. At this sector, Khatchadourian and his peers made a mad dash to the summit, as time was of the essence. It took Khatchadourian 12 straight hours of strenuous climbing without rest to get from 27,230 feet to the summit at 29,029 feet. He and his team finally reached the summit at midday. Years of preparation and training, mind and body discipline, and hard work led to this moment for Khatchadourian, as he now stood literally at the top of the world at the age of 51. This was symbolic for Khatchadourian as well, as he pondered coming from the bottom of society as a poor refugee from a war-torn country to now achieving a triumph which only about 4,000 people in the entire world have accomplished.

“I tell the children I talk to that if they don’t do such achievements for themselves, [they should] do it for their family, if not them then your friends, and if not for friends and family, do it for country,” Khatchadourian said. “For me, I do such adventures and achievements for all three of those groups.”

Khatchadourian and his team remained on the summit for 30 minutes, taking photos and enjoying the magnificent view they all worked so hard to witness.

The journey, in total, took 41 days to get from base camp to the summit, with many of those days being spent to acclimatize to the higher altitudes.

Khatchadourian is currently training and planning to tackle another challenge, to row a boat from Marseille to Beirut. This challenge would require him to undertake 1,903 nautical miles through the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

Khatchadourian is also a motivational speaker in schools across France, Lebanon and Armenia, inspiring young people to conquer what they think is the unconquerable.

“I always tell people, everyone has their own Everest,” Khatchadourian said. “It could be summiting the tallest mountain in the world or getting the job you always wanted. It will take hard work and perseverance to conquer such things, but it is the greatest feeling in the world when you succeed and reach the summit of greatness. So I ask them, what is your Everest?”

To see a video on YouTube of some his climbs, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omSn3kQm2UU

The post Ara Khatchadourian Tackles Mountains, Life and Obstacles appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Haykaram Nahapetyan

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

WASHINGTON – On March 12, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State Foreign Operations and Related Programs held hearings on US fiscal year 2020 foreign financial aid. Van Krikorian, Co-Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian Assembly of America, and Raffi Karakashian, Armenian National Committee’s Government Affairs Director, submitted testimony requesting aid for the Republics of Armenia and Artsakh.

Anastasia Staten, the chairwoman of the HALO-Trust U.S.A. highlighted HALO’s important demining activities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Nick Larigakis, the president of American Hellenic Council underscored the importance of the strategic relations between Greece and U.S. and shed light on Turkey’s occupational policy in Northern Cyprus as well as Ankara’s late anti-American initiatives.

This video on the Mirror‘s YouTube Channel features the testimonies of Van Krikorian (AAA) and Raffi Karakashian (ANCA) and excerpts from the testimonies of Anastasia Staten (HALO Trust) and Nick Larigakis (AHI).

The post Armenian-American Organizations Request US Aid for Armenia and Artsakh appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Kyle Swenson

LOS ANGELES (Washington Post) — It was November 2003. Mark Geragos was earning a worldwide rep for defending the most reviled man in America inside a courtroom in Modesto, Calif., when his beeper started screaming.

The business at hand was serious enough without digital distractions.

That April, the murdered remains of a missing 27-year-old pregnant woman named Laci Peterson splashed ashore on San Francisco Bay. Police charged the victim’s husband, Scott Peterson, a philandering fertilizer salesman who authorities said killed his wife and unborn son. Most legal experts and TV pundits said the evidence stacked against Peterson made an acquittal a long shot — an opinion echoed by Geragos on cable TV, until the mustachioed and media-savvy Los Angeles attorney decided to represent him.

But as he was in court with Peterson, his pager kept going off. The calls were to alert the attorney that another client, pop star Michael Jackson, had just been served search warrants at his Neverland Ranch. Two days later, Geragos walked Jackson into a police station in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he was charged with child molestation.

Geragos was suddenly thrust front and center in the country’s two most high-profile criminal cases. And his beeper did not shut up. Over a 24-hour period that week, his pager buzzed 700 times, Geragos told the New York Times.

“At one point, I thought of throwing it in the ocean,” the attorney explained to the Times. “To some degree it is embarrassing. I suppose because I don’t think any of this is about me. It is about the client. Hopefully it passes and passes quickly.”

Geragos, however, never slipped back below the radar.

Over the past two decades, he’s become the go-to attorney for the rich and famous. His client list evokes a tabloid rundown of celebrity mug shots: actor Robert Downey Jr.; actress Winona Ryder; rapper Nate Dogg; presidential sibling Roger Clinton; pop star Chris Brown. Just in the last year, Geragos secured a settlement for Colin Kaepernick in his lawsuit against the NFL and also stepped in to defend “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett against charges he faked a hate crime. The Rolodex of big-name clients, combined with regular cable news appearances, have made Geragos one of the most recognized figures in American law.

“If I’m going to represent somebody, I think at the very least they deserve someone who can find the good in them,” Geragos told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. “I don’t think most people are evil. I think sometimes people are demonized unfairly.”

But Geragos is now in his own surprising legal jam.

On Monday, March 25, federal authorities arrested attorney Michael Avenatti, the former lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. As the Washington Post reported, one indictment against the attorney accuses Avenatti of trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike. Citing sources close to the investigation, the Post reported Geragos is the unnamed “co-conspirator” alleged to have worked the scheme with Avenatti. Following the news, CNN announced it was dropping Geragos as an on-air contributor.

Avenatti has denied the charges. Geragos, who has not been charged, did not respond to an email for comment.

But the link between Avenatti and Geragos goes beyond Monday’s allegations. Both are on-camera naturals fueled by an underdog ethos. And Geragos first landed in the national spotlight in the 1990s by walking into a political firestorm that led right to the White House — circumstances not unlike those that catapulted Avenatti into national recognition over the last year.

Law was in Geragos’s blood. His family were members of Los Angeles’s close Armenian-American community. His father worked as a district attorney before entering private practice.

“My father was sworn in as a D.A. in January 1957, the same month I was conceived,” Geragos told Super Lawyers in 2009. As a kid, Geragos would sit in courtrooms and watch as his father’s cases unfold, an experience that fixed his own trajectory toward the courthouse.

“You could get paid for shooting your mouth off and not much else,” he told Super Lawyers.

Geragos studied anthropology and sociology at Haverford College, then after graduation entered Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. While studying law, he worked up a side business as a rock concert promoter in Pasadena, booking shows for acts such as the Ramones, the Pretenders, and the Go-Go’s, according to Super Lawyers. In 1983, he began working at his father’s firm.

“He was always a very public kind of person,” Stanley A. Goldman, a friend and former law professor, told the New York Times in 2003. “[H]e claims he rarely showed up for class because he was organizing rock concerts. I like Mark Geragos. A lot of people don’t. He can be extremely pushy.”

Geragos’s first splash into mainstream news came more than a decade later, when he began representing a woman at the center of a presidential scandal then dominating national headlines.

Susan McDougal was a former business partner of President Bill Clinton on the failed Whitewater real estate deal. When McDougal refused to testify before a grand jury called by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison for civil contempt beginning in 1996.

Upon release, McDougal was charged again for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice. At the suggestion of his father, Geragos stepped in to her defense. As he explained to the New York Times, Geragos took the case pro bono, explaining to McDougal that because of his Armenian background, he “had a special appreciation for victims of government oppression.”

When McDougal went to trial in Little Rock in 1999, the cornerstone of Geragos’s case was that his client had been railroaded in retaliation for not cooperating in Starr’s “vendetta” against the Clintons. The proceedings started less than a month after Clinton was acquitted at his impeachment trial in the Senate.

“I fully intend to put Kenneth W. Starr on trial,” Geragos told reporters at the start of the case, the Post reported at the time.

The attorney made more headlines by grilling Starr deputy W. Hickman Ewing Jr. on the witness stand. Under Geragos’s questioning, Ewing admitted he had drafted an indictment against Hillary Clinton during the Starr investigation.

“I didn’t like that she was evasive,” Ewing testified, according to Super Lawyers.

“Sort of like you right now?”, Geragos snapped back.

The jury acquitted McDougal on the obstruction of justice charge and deadlocked on the criminal contempt charge. Geragos was defiant on the steps of the courthouse. “They don’t have the guts to retry it,” he said, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2003. He eventually worked to get McDougal a full pardon in the last hours of Clinton’s presidency.

As Avenatti’s representation of Daniels in her lawsuit against President Trump over an alleged affair punched the attorney’s ticket into cable news green rooms, Geragos’s work for McDougal elevated his career to a new level.

“I always tease him about my case launching him into the limelight,” McDougal told the New York Times in 2003. “He was just absolutely perfect.”

Unlike Avenatti, Geragos spun the attention into a busy practice — too busy, some critics said. In 2003, when he was shuttling up and down California defending both Jackson and Peterson, the pop star eventually replaced him. He continued leading Peterson’s defense, but lost the case; the husband was sentenced to death row.

But those setbacks have not kept his phone from buzzing whenever a high-profile personality is in trouble — including Avenatti. According to the Hollywood Reporter, when Avenatti was arrested over an alleged domestic violence situation last November, he consulted with Geragos about the charges. (Prosecutors declined to file any charges related to the incident.)

But if the recent indictment is correct, the two attorneys’ relationship continued last week, when Avenatti and Geragos allegedly approached Nike, threatening to expose employees for funneling payments to top high school basketball players and their families.

The indictment alleges the attorneys demanded the company to hire them both to conduct an internal investigation into the issue for $15 million to $25 million. Should the case move forward, both attorneys will likely seek representation cut from the same mold — a vociferous, TV-ready advocate.

“I do take seriously the idea that you’re not supposed to turn down a case just because of its notoriety,”Geragos once told the Los Angeles Times.

The post Geragos Tangled in Avenatti Extortion Case appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

LOS ANGELES – Nina Lusine Hachigian is not only one of a handful of US ambassadors of Armenian ancestry, but also a trailblazer in Los Angeles municipal history as the first deputy mayor of international affairs.

She was appointed to this new position by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in August 2017 and began work the next month. Hachigian said, “To me, it is a very logical position for a city like Los Angeles that is very global in nature. We have huge diaspora populations here, the fourth busiest airport [of the world], and the largest port in the Western hemisphere [by cargo], and our citizens are interacting on a daily basis with entities and individuals in other countries.” Los Angeles consequently has one of the largest consular corps in the world, with over 100 members if career and honorary consuls are included.

Hachigian was moving back to Los Angeles after a posting in Jakarta, Indonesia, under the Obama administration, and had not decided what she was going to do next. She said she had known Garcetti for a long time, as he was her representative while he was on the Los Angeles City Council. She had involved him in some of her work while she held positions in think tanks. So when she returned, she wrote a note asking whether he needed anything, and his staff ended up creating this position. She ventured that Garcetti already was thinking about taking such a step and she happened to come around at the right time.

Hachigian immediately hired her team, including people who worked in the White House, State Department, Pentagon, Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative’s office, and others who had worked for the city. She clearly enjoys her work, and exclaimed: “It has been absolutely fantastic. It is a great position and I love it very much.” Comparing her new position to that of an ambassador, she said, “in some ways it is not that different from thinking about foreign policy at a national level in the sense that it is still interacting with my foreign counterparts and trying to figure out what we can do together.”

LA in the World

There are three main areas of focus: trade and investment; protocol and policy concerning international relations; and the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics. Hachigian helps businesses in Los Angeles export and tries to attract foreign investment. Her office collaborates closely with the mayor’s Office of Economic Development on this.

Her office works on the protocol of foreign visits as well as the policy side of what messages should be conveyed. It operates in an interdepartmental fashion, coordinating with all the different deputy mayors and many departments on international issues.

The City of Los Angeles is a member of a number of international city networks and participates in a variety of conferences and meetings. One big network is called C40 (www.c40.org), which is a group of over 90 megacities working to reduce climate emissions, and Garcetti is its vice chair.

Hachigian said that Los Angeles is in general “as a city measuring our progress according to the sustainable development goals, which is a kind of global development effort among nation states to reach certain goals by 2030, like reducing hunger, maternal mortality and carbon emissions.” There are 17 such goals and Los Angeles, Hachigian said, does a very in-depth analysis of how to promote those goals and track its progress “to be a good global citizen.”

Another international network in which Los Angeles participates is called the 100 Resilient Cities (https://www.100resilientcities.org/), which is concerned with how cities can create infrastructure and processes to bounce back resiliently from disasters. A third one is the Strong Cities Network (https://strongcitiesnetwork.org), which is about inclusive security and opposition to violent extremism.

Hachigian accompanies Mayor Garcetti on many of his trips abroad. For example, last year they went to Asia on a trade mission coordinated by Hachigian’s office.

The third aspect of Hachigian’s job concerns preparing for the 2028 summer Olympic and Paralympic games in Los Angeles. A group called LA28 (https://la28.org/) is producing the games but her office is the main liaison to them. Perhaps more importantly, Hachigian pointed out, “The Olympics themselves and the Paralympics are wonderful but we want to think about what we want to leave behind.” This time Los Angeles has sufficient facilities, both existing and under construction, to host the games, but, she said, there are other things that the city wants to do anyway, like completely renovate the airport and make sure that it is connected by rail. The goal will be to make sure that these projects will be completed in time for the games.

In addition, Hachigian revealed that for the first time, the International Olympic Committee has given the city money up front to start a youth sports program. Consequently, for the next ten years the city will increase the offerings in its recreation and parks facilities and make sure that those who cannot pay are still able to pay as a sort of “pre-legacy” of the games.

One of her favorite city programs is called the MaYA — the Mayor’s Young Ambassador – Initiative, in which very low-income students are sent abroad for the first time. The mayor’s office has started a program, called the College Promise program, to have the first year of community college be free. For the students in this program, going on an overseas trip is beyond their means, so Hachigian’s office worked with foreign consular officials and governments to provide such an opportunity. American Airlines agreed to offer the flights for free. So far, trips have been arranged to Mexico, Egypt and Japan, and Vietnam will be the fourth destination in the summer of 2019.

Hachigian explained why she likes this program so much: “If you have had the opportunity to travel, you know how incredibly eye-opening it is and how it gives you a perspective on your own life that you really cannot get any other way. You get exposure to the way other people are living and realize that whatever you were born into is not the only way to be, that humans choose to live in all kinds of different ways with all kinds of different cultures and customs, so to give a chance to students who would not otherwise have a chance to have that kind of experience, I think, is really powerful.”

Among the projects that Hachigian wants to carry out in the future is a study of why Los Angeles does not have as many think tanks and nongovernmental organizations dealing with international affairs as other cities with comparable size and global connections. The research will be done pro bono with the Boston Consulting Group.

A second project would be to create an international initiative concerning moving to gender equity. Hachigian pointed out: “Over half of the commissioners the mayor appoints are women, which has never before happened in the city of Los Angeles. We have dramatically increased the number of girls who are playing in parks. Over half of the deputy mayors are women and his chief of staff. We have even increased the number of female firefighters, police officers and computer programmers, so these are women in non-traditional roles. A woman runs our airport and a woman runs our department of transportation. So we have done it and there is a playbook for how to do it.” Hachigian would like to be able to share this experience and learn from other cities as well.

Career in International Relations

Hachigian embarked upon her career in international relations armed with an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a law degree from Stanford University. She said, “Law school definitely gave me the skill to figure out what the real problem is – what is at the crux, at the heart, of the matter. But I think it has been just my years of experience in developing projects with foreign counterparts and of course my work as an ambassador that have been helpful for this role.”

When asked to define her approach or school of international relations, Hachigian replied, “Every practitioner is either a liberal realist or a realist liberal. All practitioners realize that yes, power matters, but it is not the only thing that matters. Relationships matter, kinds of government matter, international organizations matter, international norms matter in the outcome, so it is neither one nor the other.”

She worked as a special assistant at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration from 1998 to 1999, went to an international affairs fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy from 2000 to 2007. Afterwards she worked at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a public policy research and advocacy organization, as a senior vice president and senior fellow until 2014. CAP was founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and Obama’s Presidential Transition director.

Hachigian participated in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2012 as codirector of Asia policy and, in 2014, was appointed by his administration as ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), based in Jakarta, Indonesia, in which position she continued to serve until January 2017.

Hachigian said that since she was only the second US ambassador to ASEAN, she had to make sure the mission was the right size, hire the right people, and continue to help build the mission. She started the US ASEAN Women’s Leadership Academy and launched an economic initiative called US-ASEAN Connect. She also helped increase the size of the Young Southeast Asian Leader Initiative to over 100,000 members. She said she was proud of all these achievements, while getting to work with President Obama at the annual ASEAN summit where the heads of state meet “was an incredibly high honor.”

She helped created Women Ambassadors Serving American (WASA) at the start of 2017, has called for greater numbers of women in leadership positions (http://time.com/4863700/women-leaders-work-equality/), and has been outspoken against sexual harassment. In November 2017, during the start of the Me Too movement, she coauthored an open letter with former State Department official Jenna Ben-Yehuda that was signed by 223 women in national security for the US, declaring that the signatories either experienced or knew someone who experienced sexual harassment and assault. The letter calls for leadership to make it clear that this behavior is unacceptable, stronger reporting, external independent data collection, mandatory training for all employees and mandatory exit interviews of all women leaving federal service.

Hachigian has been a frequent author, contributor to or editor of reports and articles published in Foreign Affairs, Washington Quarterly, Democracy, and Survival, and by the RAND Corporation, as well as opinion pieces appearing in major newspapers. She has appeared as a guest on various news shows.

She coauthored The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (Simon & Schuster, 2008). The introduction to this volume singles out the cooperation of China, Russia, Japan, the European Union, India and the United States on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache, France as a model for the future. It states that these powers want what the US wants: “a stable, peaceful, prosperous world organized around nation-states. No fundamental, intractable dispute divides us. None are ideological adversaries. This book argues that rather than worrying about these powers’ relative gains, the United States should focus on renewing itself, and take advantage of this moment to work with them to solve humanity’s pressing problems. The pure zero-sum days of great power relations are behind us.”

Six years later, Hachigian served as editor of another book, Debating China: The U.S. – China Relationship in Ten Conversations (Oxford University Press, 2014), in which she pairs Chinese and American scholars in dialogues. She and Chinese security expert Dr. Yuan Peng contributed their own chapter, titled Global Roles and Responsibilities. Despite distrust between the two countries, no author believed confrontation between these two major powers was inevitable. In agreement with the approach evinced in Hachigian’s prior book, Hachigian writes, “None sees a relationship that is necessarily zero-sum – quite the opposite. The United States and China can both provide fulfilling lives for their people, at the same time, and can even help one another reach that essential goal” (p. xvi).

Today Hachigian continues to deal with US-China relations in Los Angeles, which has a big trading relationship with China. The Chinese are the second largest group of foreign tourists to LA and invest in real estate in the city. There are many Chinese official delegations visiting to learn about city management and also much cultural exchange. She said that it is a complicated relationship that cannot be easily and concisely summed up.

Hachigian said, “On the one hand, we disagree on a lot of important matters like our values and the importance of the rule of law. I saw that when I was an ambassador in Southeast Asia. O the other hand, we have to cooperate with them, especially on the major issue of climate change, in order to make sure we don’t feel the worst aspects of global warming. So I would say that the Trump Administration is not wrong in some aspects…on the stealing of intellectual property, the forced technology transfer, the restrictions on American investors and a whole bunch of other problems. I don’t always know if they have the full strategy figured out about how they are going to change those things and at the same time be able to cooperate on things that we have to cooperate on, like climate change. Of course in their case, they don’t believe in climate change, which is convenient, but for the rest of us, we need to worry about those things.”

Hachigian has been outspoken and critical of the Trump Administration’s approach to foreign policy. Prior to assuming her Los Angeles position, she wrote in Foreign Affairs at the end of April 2017 that the Administration “lacks a sound policy process.” She said, “My broad concerns are, first, that because of process deficiencies, the United States will accidentally or purposefully take actions that cause or worsen a major crisis, and next, that American global leadership is falling off a cliff.”

On the other hand, she praised Mayor Garcetti, declaring “He is a voice for what I think of as true American values of integrity and inclusion, and pushing for individual rights, respecting and promoting the rule of law and promoting human rights.” With a different approach being followed on the federal level, Hachigian explained what can be done locally, stating, “We maintain our values. We are not going to align with approaches that are hostile and exclusionary and don’t treat our allies well. There are limits as to what a city can do but to the degree that we can be the voice of cooperation and welcoming, we want to be that voice.” She stressed in a Washington Post article in November 2017 that “We don’t have a separate foreign policy. We have initiatives and city-to-city cooperation.”

 Armenian Involvement

Hachigian is half German and half Armenian, with her paternal grandparents originally from Musa Dagh. She has relatives that she knows about in Lebanon. Her father grew up in New Jersey and she grew up in New York. She said that she and her family would attend St. Vartan Cathedral in New York City, and after she was around 12 years old, St. James Armenian Church in Westchester County, New York. Hachigian still can speak a little Armenian.

She went to church every Sunday and was in the choir. In high school she became cochair of the Armenian Church Youth Organization of America (ACYOA) chapter. She said, “My dad [Dr. Jack Hachigian] was always very involved in the Armenian Church and community, so I was as well…I grew up visiting my Armenian grandmother and the community where my dad grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.” Her relationship to that grandmother was so important to her that decades later she mentioned in her May 2014 nomination hearing for ambassador at the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that she was wearing her Armenian grandmother’s locket and that the latter had fled persecution to come to the United States.

Hachigian went to Armenia in 1988 right before the great earthquake with an ACYOA group. She was in college and documented the protests that were happening. She took a lot of photographs and wrote She can speak just a little Armenian.an article in a Rochester newspaper. She said, “I plan to go again, hopefully this year, and take my children and husband.”

Hachigian noted that Mayor Garcetti represented Little Armenia when he was a city council member, so “he has a special place in his heart for the Armenians.” He speaks at the Armenian Genocide commemoration ceremonies every ear and attends various galas and celebratory events, as does Hachigian.

He also has met with various officials of the Republic of Armenia. In November 2017, Garcetti met with the Armenian minister of defense in Los Angeles while the latter was on his way to a peacekeeping conference and discussed the Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh issue (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/frustrated-foreign-leaders-bypass-washington-in-search-of-blue-state-allies/2017/11/17/3ad10e80-cbab-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html?utm_term=.e78e7c25c03a).

Hachigian said that she hopes that the new consul-general of the Republic of Armenia, Ambassador Armen Baibourtian, will help develop some projects that can be done with the city. She said, “Since my shop didn’t exist [earlier] and he is new, in terms of the mayor’s office there is not a formal project yet, but obviously there are all kinds of cooperation that go on in general between the Armenian community here and Armenia.” She said that while she does not know how many Armenians there are in Los Angeles, there is a significant number.

Hachigian added that Los Angeles has a sister city relationship with Yerevan and usually the big anniversaries of a given sister city relationship are celebrated.

The post Ambassador Hachigian Serves as First Deputy Mayor of International Affairs in LA appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

FRESNO — Author Matthew Karanian will speak on The Armenian Highland: Western Armenia and the First Republic of Armenia of 1918 at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, in the University Business Center, Alice Peters Auditorium, Room 191 on the Fresno State campus.

One century ago, and lasting for a period of 30 months, the Armenians formed an independent democratic republic for the first time in their history. This First Armenian Republic was established on lands that comprised just 20 percent of the ancient Armenian homeland, at a time when the genocide of the Armenians still raged.

Karanian celebrates the history of this First Republic and shows, through stunning photography, the hidden Armenia that he has discovered during his research in Ani, Kars, and Western Armenia—all lands that are today outside the borders of the Republic of Armenia.

Karanian is a lawyer and a passionate supporter of Armenia who lives and works in Pasadena, California. He served for several years as a law professor and as Associate Dean of the law school at the American University of Armenia. He and his law students founded Armenia’s first English-language law journal, the Armenian Law Review.

In 2016 Matthew was awarded the Arshile Gorky Medal by the Republic of Armenia for his service to homeland and for his role in helping to serve as a bridge between the homeland and the worldwide diaspora of Armenians.

Copies of The Armenian Highland will be on sale at the lecture.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is available in Fresno State Lots P6 and P5, near the University Business Center, Fresno State. A free parking code can be obtained by contacting the Armenian Studies Program.

For more information about the lecture visit www.fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies.

The post Matthew Karanian to Present Armenian Highland: Western at Fresno State appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama has become the 49th US state to officially recognize the Ottoman-era killings and deportations of Armenians as genocide.

Kay Ivey, governor of the State of Alabama, proclaimed April 2019 as Genocide Awareness Month.

“We welcome this proclamation by Governor Ivey, making Alabama the 49th state in the union to officially re-affirm this international crime against humanity,” said Armenian National Committee of America-Eastern Region Board Chairman Steve Mesrobian.

“This proclamation serves as a powerful reminder that truth about genocides should never be held hostage to the denial of its perpetrators and those who continue to profit from that crime.”

Thus, all US states except Mississippi have recognized the Armenian Genocide.

The post Alabama Becomes 49th State to Recognize Armenian Genocide appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.