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Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of Brown University and the New York Public Library, will be the principal speaker at Lafayette’s 168th commencement at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, May 24, and will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
Rebecca S. Chopp, president of Colgate University, will deliver the baccalaureate address that morning at 10:30 a.m. She will be awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity at commencement.
The Rev. Fred Davis Sr., pastor of Easton’s Shiloh Baptist Church, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Brent D. Glass, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and a member of Lafayette’s Class of 1969, will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree.
Due to inclement weather, both the baccalaureate and commencement ceremonies will be held in Allan P. Kirby Sports Center. Luncheon following the baccalaureate service and the President’s reception following commencement exercises will be held in Kamine Gymnasium in the sports center.
Gregorian is the 12th president of Carnegie Corporation, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Gregorian served nine years as the 16th president of Brown University.
He is author of a new autobiography, The Road to Home: My Life and Times, which will be published next month by Simon & Schuster. He is also author of Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith, forthcoming from the Brookings Institution Press.
Lafayette president Arthur J. Rothkopf says, “I am delighted that Vartan Gregorian will speak to our students and parents at commencement. He has a notable record of integrity and accomplishment in his career as a scholar and leader of some of the nation’s most distinguished academic and civic institutions.”
Gregorian joins a list of eminent Lafayette commencement speakers in recent years, including former President George H.W. Bush, Maya Angelou, Jim Lehrer, George F. Will, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, Bill Cosby, and French Ambassador Francois Bujon de l’Estang.
Before becoming Brown’s president, Gregorian was president of New York Public Library from 1981-89. He “restored the fading New York Public Library to its place at the heart of American intellectual life,” said The New York Times. “He revived an empire of learning that is more than ever a national treasure.”
In 1986, he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and in 1989 the American Academy of the Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Service to the Arts. In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal.
In 1972 Gregorian joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history. He was founding dean of Penn’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and four years later became its 23rd provost, serving until 1981. He has also taught European and Middle Eastern history at San Francisco State College, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Gregorian is author of Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1880-1946. A Phi Beta Kappa and a 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.
Born in Tabriz, Iran, of Armenian parents, Gregorian received 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.
He has been honored by various cultural and professional associations, including the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, the Players Club, PEN-American Center, Literacy Volunteers of New York, the American Institute of Architects and the Charles A. Dana Foundation. He has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian and Portuguese governments and honored by the city and state of New York, the states of Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, and the cities of Fresno, Austin, Providence and San Francisco.
He serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Human Rights Watch, the Museum of Modern Art, and The McGraw-Hill Companies. He served on the boards of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Aga Khan University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, will be principal speaker at the 168th Commencement