Vartan Gregorian, Ph.D., to the Deliver the 119th Adelphi Commencement Address

Vartan Gregorian Ph.D.

Adelphi University will confirm graduates at the associate, bachelor, master and doctoral levels during its 119^th Commencement on Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, Uniondale, NY.

Vartan Gregorian will deliver the Commencement address and be recognized with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. 

Vartan Gregorian is the 12th president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Dr. Gregorian served for nine years as the 16th president of Brown University.

He was born in Tabriz, Iran, of Armenian parents, receiving his elementary education in Iran and his secondary education in Lebanon. In 1956, he entered Stanford University, where he majored in history and the humanities, graduating with honors in 1958. He was awarded a Ph.D. in history and humanities from Stanford in 1964.

Dr. Gregorian has taught European and Middle Eastern history at colleges and universities across the United States. He has also served as Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history, as well as founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and 23^rd provost at the University of Pennsylvania.

For eight years (1981–1989), Dr. Gregorian served as president of the New York Public Library. In 1989, he was appointed president of Brown University.

Dr. Gregorian is the author of several books, including The Road to Home: My Life and Times, Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith and The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946. A Phi Beta Kappa and Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellow, he is a recipient of numerous fellowships, including those from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 1969, he received the Danforth Foundation’s E.H. Harbison Distinguished Teaching Award.

He serves on several boards, including the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and the American Academy in Berlin. He has served on the boards of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Aga Khan University, the Qatar Foundation, the McGraw-Hill Companies, Brandeis University, Human Rights Watch, The Museum of Modern Art and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 1986, Dr. Gregorian was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and, in 1989, the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Service to the Arts. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal. In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed him to the White House Fellowships Commission.

Additionally, Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace and longtime peace activist, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and Mark W. Harris, president and chief executive officer of ELS Educational Services, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Mildred (Loughlin) Kahane ’49 and Louis Flego ’55 will receive the Ruth S. Harley Distinguished Alumni Achievement Awards.

For more information and the full day’s program, please contact Adelphi’s Commencement Office at at 516.877.4695 or visit commencement.adelphi.edu.