by Hrag Vartanian
Home of the first Armenian Studies Chair in the United States, Boston's universities continue to attract the brightest from around the world. In contrast, New York journalist Arthur Lubow in the 1950's remarked, "Diversity wasn't always cultivated along the banks of the Charles." Today, Boston's institutions of higher learning are working to integrate a wider consciousness into the city's universities as ethnic groups become active components of campus life.
Chancellor Dr. Gregory Adamian is a formidable presence at Bentley College. At Tufts University a cluster of Armenian Americans have made their mark, and at Harvard University Professor Dr. James Russell ensures that an Armenian presence exists at the world's foremost center of learning. All contribute to the rich Armenian presence on the city's campuses.
THE SINGULAR DR. GREGORY ADAMIAN
In 1970, when Gregory Adamian became President of Bentley College the school's endowment was only $365,000, it offered one Bachelor's degree and faced a large debt. After 21 years of Adamian's Presidency, the endowment reached $60 million, the school added numerous Bachelor's degrees and five graduate degrees.
Born in Somerville, Adamian grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and returned to Boston with his family after high school. He studied law at Boston University after earning two degrees from Harvard and remembers his early community involvement after returning to the Watertown area, "When I started practicing law in Cambridge I got involved in a variety of organizations in Watertown and became chairman of the now defunct Committee for the Resettlement of Armenians in the United States. That exposed me immediately to a large number of Armenians in Boston." He also volunteered his time fundraising for the local Armenian church and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research. This early experience exposed him to institutional fundraising, a talent he would hone to perfection for his greatest challenge to come.
During the sixties, Adamian began teaching law and economics at Bentley College and Suffolk University. In 1970, Adamian was appointed to a Bentley committee entrusted to find a new college president. It became evident to the other members of the committee that Adamian was best suited for the position. Resisting the idea at first, Adamian agreed to take the position temporarily but it soon became a permanent career change.
As President, he streamlined faculty, addressed basic campus needs, and had a hand in building 40 of the 45 campus buildings. He was an innovative visionary and while universities were still discussing the integration of computer technology into the classroom Adamian mandated laptops for students 15 years ago.
Today, upon retirement, honored by having an Academic Center and a Professorship of Law named after him, Adamian is the college's first Chancellor. He continues to develop his personal relationships with donors, including a number of prominent Armenian Americans. Through the years, he has encouraged many generous donations from individuals not otherwise associated with the college, including Alex Manoogian who donated the funds required to build the school's President's house in the early eighties.
Former Harvard President Derrick Bok acknowledged Adamian's work when he declared at a celebration for the twentieth anniversary of Adamian's presidency, "What he has accomplished is miraculous. I dare say that being President of Bentley College is a lot more difficult than being President of Harvard."
According to Adamian, Bentley has broken through the glass ceiling of higher learning in the last year. U.S. News & World Report selected the school as the 13th best college in the U.S. for E-commerce—being the only non-university to be placed on the list.
As Bentley's star continues to rise, Tufts University has been welcoming Armenians for decades, successfully creating a dynamic Armenian presence on campus that encompasses the administrative, academic and student life.
A SPECIAL PLACE FOR ARMENIANS AT TUFTS
With two professors dedicated to Armenian subjects, three Armenian trustees, an Armenian philanthropic donor network and a small active Armenian student body, Tufts is unlike Boston's other universities.
Known as 'Mr. Tufts,' alumnus John Baronian has been crucial to the Armenian presence at Tufts for decades. His involvement in Tufts began soon after the Second World War, "I was a GI and more street smart than book smart. I became president of the undergraduate varsity club, a member of student council, a member of many honors societies and played four years of varsity football. I had a wonderful experience and I knew that I would repay Tufts in my own way." And repay Tufts he did.
Twenty-five years ago he established the John K. and Margaret G. Baronian Memorial Scholarship in memory of his parents for students in financial need. He advises the Tufts Armenian Student Union and as a result has been in contact with over 500 Armenian students over the decades. He is the founder of numerous alumni groups including the university's largest, the Tufts Jumbo Club, which supports the school's athletic department.
After 10 years of service as Alumni Trustee, he continues to rally support from the Armenian American community. Tufts has honored Baronian by giving him an honorary degree, one of four ever given to an Armenian American, and naming the Athletic Field House after him—a fundraising effort he himself spearheaded. His reputation at Tufts is unparalleled and the majority of students easily recognize Baronian on the Medford campus. He is a tireless presence on campus and the hub of a dynamic network that has grown to include other Armenian Americans.
Two other Armenian American trustees at Tufts are active members of the college, Dr. Joan Margosian Bergstrom and Dr. Joyce Barsam. The newest of the trustees, Dr. Bergstrom recently made a major gift to endow a chair in Tufts' influential child study department.
Trustee Dr. Joyce Barsam is a graduate of Tufts and a native of Watertown. "Tufts has always been a welcoming place for Armenians. Most recently, I was instrumental in bringing over 30 Armenian diplomats from the Armenian Foreign Ministry to the Fletcher School. They have returned to Yerevan where we now have a cadre of Western-trained/Fletcher-trained Armenian diplomats. We hope that will make a difference," she says.
In fact, Tuft's prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy has trained one third of Armenia's foreign ministry, including the present Foreign Minister himself, Vartan Oskanian. The University has been delighted with the results and, according to Barsam, the experience has taught Fletcher professors about the critical importance of the Caucasus.
Barsam explains how the program began, "I'm also a trustee of the Tavitian Foundation in New Jersey that awards scholarships to students of Armenian descent. Two years ago, the Foundation thought it was a good idea to see what can be done to train students who wanted to study International Law and Diplomacy and we knew the Fletcher School was one of the best institutions for that. We thought we could create a synergy with the Armenian Foreign Ministry and Fletcher. Fortunately, after intensive negotiations we were able to make it work and the foundation was willing to support it financially."
Professors Lucy Der Manuelian and Ina Baghdiantz McCabe both offer courses that attract students of all backgrounds. Their research and work promote the study of Armenia's history within a world context.
Raised in an active Armenian American family, Der Manuelian absorbed an initial interest in Armenian architecture through her godfather, Arshak Fetfadjian, an artist trained in Rome and known as the designer of the first Armenian Republic's bank notes. Her academic career began later in life at Radcliffe College, "I was interested in medieval art and architecture and I audited courses at Harvard. I came across footnotes about Armenian art and architecture mentioning that it may be the source for Gothic architecture. I got very excited."
She went on to do her Ph.D. at Boston University but was confronted with the dilemma of working in a field with a lack of specialists. She eventually found an advisor, Oleg Grabar, and a means to do effective research in Soviet Armenia through the International Research and Exchanges Board. This special program allowed her to travel to Armenia in 1977 and document the medieval churches. Transportation and permission to visually document the monuments were chronic problems during the Soviet-era. She prevailed and her dissertation was the first in the U.S. in the field of Armenian art.
Grabar proposed a rotating teaching position be established so that Der Manuelian could teach Armenian art at a number of institutions. He suggested Tufts as a home base because of the school's strong Armenian presence.
Der Manuelian worked hard to raise money for a permanent position and recognized her opportunity to gather those funds with her breakthrough exhibition, "Weavers, Merchants and Kings." The exhibit showcased the world of Armenian carpets and together with producer Ted Bogosian she created a supplementary video to be broadcast locally in cities hosting the exhibit. The video gave her good exposure and during the course of her lectures and tours she came upon two prominent individuals who donated the million-dollar endowment necessary for a Tufts chair. The Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art and Architectural History in the Department of Art History at Tufts was the first teaching position of its kind in the country.
She continues to popularize Armenian art and Lost Treasures of Christianity: The Ancient Monuments of Armenia is her latest video. It has been broadcast on 58 Public Television stations nationally. She explains, "If I made a book out of my dissertation, how many people would read it. I knew if I made a film on location more people were apt to see it. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of Armenian history "
Ina Baghdiantz McCabe knows that there is still much left to discover in the world of Armenian history. She is fascinated by the New Julfa Armenian settlement in Isfahan, Iran, whose collective wealth once surpassed the Shah's and paralleled that of the Rothschilds in France.
Born in Teheran to an Armenian father and a Belgian mother, it was from her mother that she acquired a deep fascination with Armenian history. Her work in the field has been fashioned by one central question, "How could the unique and independent city of New Julfa have sprung up in the middle of another country?" Her doctoral research uncovered previously unknown Imperial firmans that guaranteed the Armenian traders exclusive rights to the silk trade and other commodities.
After briefly teaching at the University of Chicago and Bennington College in Vermont, she was appointed the Hagop and Miriam Darakjian and Boghos, Nazley and Haig Jafarian Chair of Armenian History in Tufts' history department in 1998.
While teaching standard world history surveys, she admits to being more motivated by her courses that focus on Armenian subjects, a field she finds, "the widest and most global. You have to know what's happening all over the map just to follow what's going on. The unique thing about Armenians is they often don't have one culture but at least two—sometimes even five."
This pluralism and diversity attracted another prominent academic in the field of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, Dr. James Russell.
DR. JAMES RUSSELL LOOKS AT THE ARMENIAN LITERARY TRADITION
Founded in 1959, Dr. James Russell is only the second individual to be appointed the Mesrob Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard.
A native of New York City, Dr. Russell's first exposure to Armenian culture may have been when his parents took him to one of the city's Armenian restaurants for his birthday. His first hands-on experience with the wonders of Armenia was during the summer of 1969 as part of a school group, "I became interested because it was the first Eastern country I had ever been to and I was very interested in the Matenadaran manuscript archive. It was different from other Eastern cultures and rather unknown. When I got back to the States, I tried to teach myself Armenian."
His personal interest developed through studies at Columbia University and later Oxford University in England where he worked on the medieval Armenian lyric. He completed his Ph.D. in Iranian Studies at the University of London on Zoroastrianism in Pre-Christian Armenia. Without a plan as to what his studies would develop into for his future, his parents were supportive and their Jewish heritage helped them to understand the young scholar's interest in Armenian culture and identity.
After working briefly for the Diocese in New York and teaching at Columbia University and the Hebrew University, he was chosen for the Mashtots Chair in 1992. He continues to find the field of Armenian Studies fascinating and has focused his attention on folklore and epics. "The traditions and values enshrined in Armenian oral literature constitute a secular scripture that held the community together and gave it a sense of identity in addition to the formal ecclesiastical one," he says about his discoveries.
His recent work on issues of sexuality and drug use in the work of Soviet Armenian poet Eghishe Charents has been controversial in some circles, but he is happy to be working in the Armenian Studies community in America which has a crucial role to play in the international discipline. He explains, "Armenian American academia must present quite firmly a position of pluralism and free thought because there are tendencies in Armenia towards puritanism and the imposition of new types of academic orthodoxy." In fact, The History of Armenia as Presented in American Historiography, a recent book released by a noted scholar in Armenia, Armen Ayvazian, suggests that some American scholars in Armenian studies are foreign agents whose work forwards Turkish political claims, a suggestion that bewilders Russell, "We have to achieve a level of maturity and goodwill in our dialogue."
Russell's enthusiasm for Armenian Studies is tempered with caution, "In the field we can be provincial and defensive. We regard anything that seems negative or unusual as somewhat harmful, though often it will make our field look more interesting, richer and more related to the rest of the world."
