The Elliott School of International Affairs mourns the passing of Dr. Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Under Dr. Gregorian’s visionary approach, the Carnegie Corporation became a leader in advancing research on international peace and security across America’s academic institutions, including at GW and the Elliott School. Dr. Gregorian understood the vital importance of social science research and scholarship to strong, democratic societies and supported projects making scholarly work accessible to wider audiences.
His lifelong commitment to learning and discovery had a tremendous impact on higher education across the United States, and at the Elliott School. Under Dr. Gregorian’s leadership, the Carnegie Corporation supported some of the Elliott School’s most impactful programs, including the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS), Johnson’s Russia List, the Nuclear Security Working Group, and for research on US Strategic Nuclear Policy toward China.
Henry Hale, PONARS Co-Director and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, shared “I was shocked and saddened to hear the news of Vartan Gregorian’s passing. Under his guidance, Carnegie Corporation has played an immense—and, indeed, irreplaceable—role in supporting scholarship in the cause of peace. This includes his emphasis on the central importance of US-Russian relations and on the need for investment in successive generations of specialists with strong grounding in policy-conscious academic research.”
Marc Lynch, POMEPS Director and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, added, “The Project on Middle East Political Science, the academic society housed at the Elliott School which has supported the careers of so many junior scholars, would never have been conceived, much less flourished, without the support of Vartan Gregorian. His visionary leadership of the Carnegie Corporation will be sorely missed even as we try to honor his legacy.”
We are grateful for the life and incredible support of Vartan Gregorian, and we will continue to celebrate his legacy of peace, scholarship, and learning.