by Louise manoogian Simone
LMS. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. You lead such a dynamic life in so many different circles. I must take this opportunity to say how proud we are of you. As an American and as an Armenian you have achieved an outstanding position in our country. If there is one field that the United States leads the world in its education. As President of Brown University you will influence the very future of our society. What are the challenges before you?
VG. There are many challenges. First, a global civilization is emerging. How to retain particular national cultures within that global civilization is something America is facing once again and Europe will soon face as a result of the common market. In the United States, today, many ethnic groups are trying to demonstrate that they did not come here without a culture or knowledge; that they have a rich heritage to contribute to America. So the challenge is how not to allow these particular cultures to become ghettoized or ossified but rather to be a complementary component of the American society. This is the number one challenge we face both in curriculum and the educational process.
The second is fragmentation of knowledge. We are becoming more and more specialists. We don't teach our PhD's how to synthesize. We see today the collapse of ideologies, whether its communism or something else. The Catholic church is facing its many sectarian movements. Protestants, not to mention Armenians, have all been fractionalized. We don't teach "what's the common ground or common knowledge," in other words, how to synthesize knowledge. As a result we have hundreds of specialists and you have to bring in many to answer any one common problem. It is a problem in our universities because all available information doubles every five years. The main thing is how do we transform that information to structured knowledge so that we will not be manipulated by trivia. Information is not knowledge necessarily. We know more and more about everything yet less and less about the depth of many subject matters.
The third challenge is individualism. We think we are individualists but we are conformists, more and more becoming homogenized. That's one place where some of the ethnic cultures can provide a perspective for America. In some groups individualism is considered a luxury because as long as the group is not completely emancipated it is thought to be an act of luxury to drop out, as in the case of African Americans. In other instances, if an ethnic group has already been absorbed, such as Anglo-Saxons, individualism is considered not a luxury but a necessity.
Fourth, we teach in America how to cope with success but we never teach in our schools how to cope with failure and adversity as part of the cycle of life. Coming in second is considered unAmerican. That creates false kinds of conclusions about life in general.
The fifth challenge I see is the issue of general education. Our secondary schools should be providing the general education, as is the case in Europe, not universities. Higher education is too expensive to be remedial which is what the first two years of college are becoming.
Last but not least is the problem of a domestic agenda for America because now the external enemies are gone. Before we could rationalize that the reason we didn't have one was because we were fighting against world communism and its "conspiracy." Now there is a greater mandate to spend more on our country and our economy. You'd be surprised how few people think in terms of the economic interests of the United States. They think politically and ideologically but they don't have any place for economics and environment. Our infrastructure is decaying. Take New York, for example. The whole city's infrastructure has to be fixed within the next 20-25 years. America has to come home without being isolationist or retreating into its cocoon. We have a 50% dropout rate in our high schools. We have the homeless. We can no longer afford to live under the shadow of our former greatness.
LMS. As an academician you have been surrounded by young adults all your life. What's the difference between this generation and let's say 10 or 20 years ago? How should we prepare for them? What can we expect?
VG. Ten years ago, actually after Vietnam I should say, there was a great deal of inward turning in America. The thinking was that since one could not solve the world's problems they might as well solve their own problem. "Do your own thing." There was more preoccupation with self interest and career, especially during the last decade. Now, I detect a certain new phase. If the generation of the 50's was considered a complacent generation, the 60's revolutionary, the 70's and 80's the yuppie generation, I think this new one is emerging as a compassionate generation. I see good signs about this -- materialism is important but they are thinking about the quality of life. I think the current recession has also forced people to look for true values. With some of the universal ideologies collapsing there is a greater burden on individuals to judge for themselves rather than follow a catechism. There is also more worry about America's future instead of just thinking we are the greatest nation on earth and therefore it doesn't matter what happens elsewhere.
By the year 2000 we will need a skilled labor force of 25 million, 1.1 million school teachers and 500,000 professors just to replace retirees. We must have a unity regarding the country and its interests. Without an organized effort, involvement, we will not succeed. There has been a great deal of erosion in America about the value of pubic service. The public sector and excellence are not mutually exclusive. There is an attitude that excellence belongs to the private domain and that people who go into public service to become teachers or officials do not have that "fire in the belly" or entrepreneurial talent so therefore they accept less paying jobs. What may characterize the 1990's, and I hope its not just wishful thinking, is that people have to be appreciated for who they are rather than what they have.
At Brown our students give 100,000 hours of public service at various institutions each year. I hope one day there will be some kind of national public service instead of military service, students giving one or two years of their time to national projects. America is not the kind of country where you can take as much as possible and give as little as possible because we're all in the same boat. If the ship sinks there's no solace in who was riding first, second or third class.
LMS. It often seems we are not advancing fast enough in our Armenian organizations. Armenians are so tradition bound - any divergence from the past seems to be threatening. I used to think these traditions were a great asset, the reason our cultural identity held strong through all the years of dispersion. Now, however, I question whether it is the reason so many have fled. Do you think this attrition rate is normal in any ethnic group or is a change in order on our parts?
VG. Tradition is a source of strength. It is not frozen, it's always evolving. As long as tradition does not become a moat but rather a bridge - that's fine. One of the greatest cliches in historical literature is "continuity and change" but change without continuity is silly. It has no context. On the other hand continuity without change is unreal. So the basic thing is how not to lower your aspirations and standards and yet be faithful to your traditions. People confuse means and ends. Means always have to change. Unfortunately, we Armenians, instead of dispassionate analysis, always tend to personalize things.
The Armenian community in America, as a community, is almost 125 years old. The community has always faced artificial divisions between those who came late to America and those who arrived earlier. It is remarkable that after a century Armenians have kept a viable community without succumbing altogether to assimilation.
One must pay tribute to the first wave of Armenian immigrants to America for they fought to survive, to retain their faith, to keep their links to their motherland and prepare a better future for their sons and daughters. They kept the Armenian organizations going. All generations of Armenians were caught in a dilemma. They were in America to be free, to be secure, to earn a living or to build fortunes, receive an education, to keep the ethnic organizations functioning and thriving, while hoping that one day when Armenia was free and secure they could return to their motherland.
Thus the Armenians wanted to survive in their adopted land without creating a permanent structure for their community in America. Therefore we should pay tribute to them. We should not look down on them because some don't speak Armenian well or because their organizations lacked "professionalism."
Emigre organizations in the early years always had to depend on what they had and what they had became the standard. Many never had the background or training for what they were doing. Dedicated, underpaid, overworked, one could not criticize their "professionalism" without questioning their loyalty. And, however frustrating, this is normal by the way. So, what happened? When they came, they did not have the expertise but they were the people who kept the flame burning. Unfortunately, however, they did not prepare a second generation of professionals to assume their responsibilities.
There are several reasons for this. Another generation did not consider serving Armenian organizations as a source of career advancement. The available positions were multi-purpose jobs. You had to be a field worker, organizer, propagandist, editor, etc. And, of course, it was also a way for organizations and political parties to keep their loyal workers employed. There was nothing wrong with that at the time. They all thought, consciously or unconsciously, that one day they might return to Armenia so they did not organize a structure to succeed them. Now, since we are here to stay, it is different.
Let me clarify one point, that there is confusion between professionalism and language. It is "who delivers that counts." Now we have a bilingual and educated generation of Armenians. We Armenians often care who does it more than what has to be done and that has been a tragedy all our lives. . . We are less tolerant of each other. We get along well with "foreigners" because if we lack "professionalism" vis-a-vis them we worry about what would "they" think of us. But when it comes to "us" we don't care because we already know one another.
We cannot capture our university-educated youth through exhortation or propaganda. You have to instruct them in such a way that it satisfies the intellectual, professional and personal needs. In the end it strengthens them because they will know who they are as Armenians. imon Vratzian, my teacher and mentor, used to say we kept Armenians Armenian through dance and food but that's not enough now. For this generation to work in Armenian organizations, it cannot be solely an act of Christian charity on the part of the individuals. They must be convinced that serving Armenian organizations is a professional rather than a dead end job.
And then, of course, there is the question of style. I have taken my children and friends to Armenian events. I have to tell you, any event that lasts 6 hours turns them off. Strangely enough, we cannot take criticism. If you criticize any Armenian event for its style or its length or lack of intellectual depth, one feels guilty for it may be construed to be an attack against the Armenian identity or Armenian ways of doing things. If, on the other hand, you criticize a non-Armenian event then it is just a matter of taste. . .
I vividly remember two events where I was the keynote speaker. One of them began at 6PM, but I didn't give my speech until 11PM. There was another event and again it was 11:30PM by the time I was invited to the podium. Half the audience was asleep, the other half was walking out. I got up to say, "There is no time. Everything that could be said has been said. Thank you." I got a rousing ovation but then somebody admonished me with "Well, you should have seen when the President of Harvard was here. It was later than tonight." "Did he ever come back again?" I asked. "No," was the reply.
LMS. Talking about children, I have 3 who are in varying degrees "Armenian". Two of them are willing to participate when asked and the third is fairly active. Armenia is about the only thing that generates any real interest. You have 3 sons. Have you been able to instill any enthusiasm or commitment?
VG. My children were brought up as Armenians by my wife which comes as a great surprise to everyone because she's not Armenian. She learned how to read, speak and write Armenian. She took them to Tabriz (Iran) and had them baptized by the same priest that had married my parents and had baptized me. Two of my sons spoke Armenian until they were 8 years old. Then we moved to Austin, Texas. I discovered that unless you have full-time community or organizational support or you can create time by putting in a couple hours a day you cannot succeed in preserving the language. All my children are proud to be Armenian. All 3 of them had great problems with their first names in Texas (Vahé, Raffi and Dareh-Ardashes) because nobody could pronounce them correctly. They were always listed under the girls' categories in school. Somebody once told Raffi that his was a Jewish name meaning serendipity.
My oldest son, Vahé, is a journalist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. My second son, Raffi, is a military historian in Washington, DC and a PhD. candidate at Johns Hopkins, and my third son, Dareh, who attended the Armenian Sisters Academy in Pennsylvania for eight years, is a senior at Boston University. All three of them have rediscovered, in their own way, their Armenian heritage: Raffi, by going to Soviet Armenia and reading among others Franz Werfel's Forty Days of Musa Dagh; Dareh, by being interested in how various administrations have dealt with the Armenian Genocide; and Vahé, as a journalist.
I have not imposed upon them Armenianism for I believe you are not born an Armenian, you become an Armenian. Consciousness leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to language, and both of them lead to solid identity. Language without culture, culture without history and history without consciousness is not sufficient to guarantee one's identity.
LMS. How do you see the next five years for the Soviet Union in general and Armenia in particular? (Editor's note - A reminder to our readers that this discussion was held before the dramatic August 19 events in the Soviet Union).
VG. I think the Soviet Union in its current form is not going to exist. Definitely the Baltic Republics will be out. Some face saving device will be found like the Soviet Union authorizing them to be part of the common market first as a "Zone Franche" (Free Zone).
Second, the Soviet Union is going to be very much preoccupied by Ozal's (President of Turkey) strategy. He wants to be a Mediterranean power in order to fill the vacuum. There's no leadership in the Balkans. Yugoslavia might have provided it but not now. Bulgaria is very poor. Greece is the only one that could compete but they don't have an international strategy other than commerce. They don't think geo-politically. My guess is that Turkey will leave Cyprus with some kind of arrangement - the price being Greece will not veto their entry into the Common Market.
Turkey wants to have a major role in the Caucasus as well, in a way to pick up where they left off in 1918; It wants a major role with the Ukraine and the Balkans as trade partners. Turkey wants to take this opportunity to industrialize the eastern region of the country, in order to stop the possibility of a future Kurdistan. The Soviet Union or Soviet Russia is not going to allow this. At best they will allow the Caucasus to remain neutral, like Finland. Soviet Russia needs oil. It needs the Caucasus as a bridge to the Middle East.
Now I personally believe that Armenians should have been last in showing their trump card in the Soviet Union, not first. One of the most brilliant Armenian political thinkers in the 19th century was Krikor Arzruni. He said to the effect that the Armenian bourgeoisie has money, a national resource, and they are scattered throughout Czarist Russia, they should build commerce in the Ottoman Empire and invest in historical Armenia. If and when a major global upheaval occurs, Armenians should pick up the pieces. Armenians should be observers, not instigators or pawns. I only mention this because we hear "We are the ones who started the protest in the Soviet Union. We were number one." Well, that's no consolation.
We don't have a quiet, articulate, long-term strategy of nation building. As a result our situation is very untenable. We're cut off from oil, from the Black Sea and we have a very minor border with Iran and there are attempts to even cut that. But, we do have human resources. Then the issue is how to build a national economy. Armenia has to become a Taiwan, a kind of electronic capital, a computer center or the Mayo Clinic of the Soviet Union so others will build roads to get to us. How we transform that manpower into skilled labor is the challenge because political independence without economic independence is not going to be viable.
Having said this we should marvel at the fact that since Armenians have suffered for 70 years, it is a miracle that there is even this much left.
LMS. This issue of the AGBU Quarterly is highlighting the Middle East. We have a substantial Armenian community there of several hundred thousand. How do you see the future?
VG. With the end of the cold war I'm very optimistic about the Middle East now. If the Palestinian issue is settled there will be greater pressure for each of the countries in the Middle East, including Israel, not to postpone social and economic justice. It may sound outlandish but I think, if peace or some acceptable solution comes, you will see the Middle East emerging as a major region, financially more powerful than Europe. There's no excess capital in Europe or even the U.S., only in Japan and the Pacific Basin. If the Middle East is not investing in arms but in business it will usher a great era of development. There is a population explosion. Sheer demography is going to demand economic justice.
Now, the Armenian communities, thank God, have never been part of the Middle East establishment because we have been excluded from the political process. Second, we have never been considered outsiders, fifth columnists, etc. Maybe with rare instances but no one has used that argument against us. We know the culture, the language and the region. We've been there for thousands of years and once again we're going to be an essential force, an entrepreneurial force. As a matter of fact, I believe you will see some Armenians returning to Iran, to Lebanon and to Iraq when Saddam's regime is over.
LMS. This is a very, very interesting historic period in our lives as democracy, or the ideal of democracy, takes over throughout the world. That's what we are seeing as dictatorships, and feudal systems keep collapsing. It could change the world in 25 to 50 years.
VG. The main problem is the growing pains that come with democracy. At first they will interpret democracy as anarchy but then, gradually, a new reality will emerge. My worry about the Soviet Union is that glasnost and perestroika without economic success will feed right into the hands of the old guard. They will say you might not have had freedom but you had bread. Once again they will force people to choose security over liberty.
