Category: News

The Hayastan All-Armenian Fund is implementing a multi-year renovation project at Yerevan’s Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School, with the sponsorship of the fund’s Eastern US affiliate. Founded in 1939, the school provides a curriculum that combines music and general education. Currently it has more than 600 students.

The extensive renovations are expected to be completed by the beginning of the 2016 academic year. To date, the campus, which was built in 1973, had undergone seismic retrofitting, a complete structural redesign, and a slew of upgrades. The improvements include a new roof, new doors and windows, and new heating, air-conditioning, electrical, water, plumbing, and security systems. Other significant enhancements include the addition of an elevator and evacuation staircases.

The main building of the campus has been thoroughly modernized and now features a sizeable foyer. The renovations have also included the reconstruction of the gym and the transformation of the concert hall into a state-of-the-art auditorium, complete with a new stage and amenities for performers and audiences alike. Thanks to the refurbishments, the school’s symphony orchestra, string quartet, brass band, choir, and jazz band now have comfortable and fully appointed rehearsal rooms.

 

The final phase of renovations will include the construction of wheelchair ramps at the entrance of the school, a completely upgraded lighting system throughout the grounds, and the installation of pavilions and benches in the inner courtyard. Artistic touches, including a relief sculpture on the facade of the main building, created by architect Jim Torossian, as well as the interior relief sculpture and stained-glass windows, will continue to lend the school an esthetic character all its own.

 

In 2014, the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School celebrated the 75^th anniversary of its founding. Legendary composer Aram Khachaturyan has called the storied school a “foundry of musicians.” Its alumni have included Eduard Tadevosyan, Ruben Altunyan, Vahram Sarajev, Jean Ter-Mergeryan, Levon Chaushyan, Sergey Smbatyan, Tigran Hamasyan, Aram Talalyan, Vahagn Hayrapetyan, Armen Babakhanyan, Stepan Lusikyan, and other musical giants who are the pride of the Armenian people.

 

West called in to Los Angeles radio station Real 92.3 on Thursday morning to discuss his forthcoming album. He chatted with his friend, radio deejay Big Boi, and credited someone much larger than himself for the as-yet-untitled project.

“I’m only doing one percent, two percent of the work and God is doing the rest of the work,” he said.

The rapper also added that he believes both his late mother, Donda West, and late father-in-law, Robert Kardashian Sr., have had a hand in his recent success.

“My mom… had Teddy Riley change his flight and come back to the studio,” West said. “Robert Kardashian is making sure that all the deals is getting done. He’s still doing deals for controversial black people from up in heaven.”

Massis Post – The noteworthy memoir, Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford Univ. Press, 2015), by the late Karnig Panian, will be the focus of a program on Thursday, February 18 at the Armenian Society of Los Angeles in Glendale, CA. The event is organized by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and co-sponsored by the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society, Hamazkayin Jemaran Association, Nor Serount Cultural Association, and Tekeyan Cultural Association.

Featuring remarks by the author’s daughter, Houry Panian Boyamian, Principal of St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School in Watertown, MA, the event will also include presentations by Dr. Richard G. Hovannisian, Professor Emeritus of Modern Armenian and Near Eastern History, UCLA, and Adjunct Professor of History, USC, as well as independent researcher Maurice Missak Kelechian. Dr. Keith David Watenpaugh of the University of California, Davis, will provide comments via video, and Dr. Viken Yacoubian of Woodbury University and the Hamazkayin Central Executive Board will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

Born in the Anatolian village of Gurin, Karnig Panian was only five years old when World War I began. Four years later, American aid workers found him at an orphanage in Antoura, Lebanon. He was among nearly 1,000 Armenian and 400 Kurdish children who had been abandoned by the Turkish administrators, left to survive at the orphanage without adult care. He grew up to become an educator and vice-principal at Djemaran, the Armenian Lyceum, based in Beirut, Lebanon.

His memoir, Goodbye, Antoura, offers the extraordinary story of what he endured in those years—as his people were deported from their Armenian community, as his family died in a refugee camp in the deserts of Syria, as he survived hunger and mistreatment in the orphanage. The Antoura orphanage was another project of the Armenian Genocide: its administrators, some benign and some cruel, sought to transform the children into Turks by changing their Armenian names, forcing them to speak Turkish, and erasing their history.

Goodbye, Antoura was translated by Simon Beugekian and edited by Aram Goudsouzian. It includes a foreword by Dr. Vartan Gregorian and an introduction and afterword by Prof. Keith David Watenpaugh.

Panian paints a painfully rich and detailed picture of the lives and agency of Armenian orphans during the darkest days of World War I. Ultimately, Karnig Panian survived the Armenian Genocide and the deprivations that followed. Goodbye, Antoura assures us of how humanity, once denied, can be again reclaimed.

Copies of Goodbye, Antoura will be available the night of the lecture through a partnership with Abril Bookstore of Glendale.

The European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday recognizing the Islamic State militant group’s (ISIS) systematic killing and persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East as a genocide, reports.

The vote, decided by a show of hands at a European Parliament plenary session in the French city of Strasbourg, was the first time the body has recognized an ongoing conflict situation as a genocide. The resolution states that those who intentionally commit atrocities for ethnic or religious reasons should be brought to justice for violations against international law, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

ISIS has systematically persecuted religious minorities in its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, kidnapping hundreds of Assyrian Christians in Syria, forcing Christians to live under its radical strand of Islam in the central Syrian city of Al-Qaryatain, enslaving and raping Yazidi women and children in northern Iraq, as well as killing Yazidi men and dumping them in mass graves.

Lars Adaktusson, Swedish member of the European Parliament for the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) Group, who tabled the resolution, calls the vote a “historic decision” that represents a further step towards recognition of ISIS crimes against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities at the United Nations.

“It’s really important that the Parliament passed it, on a political level and a moral level. The significance is the obligations that follow by such a recognition,” he says, speaking to Newsweek by phone. “The collective obligation to intervene, to stop these atrocities and to stop the persecution in the ongoing discussion about the fight against the Islamic State.”

He adds: “It gives the victims of the atrocities a chance to get their human dignity restored. It’s also a historical confirmation that the European Parliament recognized what is going on and that they are suffering from the most despicable crime in the world, namely genocide.”

The founder of soul group Earth, Wind & Fire, Maurice White, has died in the US, his brother has said.

White, 74, died in his sleep in Los Angeles on Thursday morning. He suffered from Parkinson’s Disease.

His band had a series of hits including September, Boogie Wonderland, Shining Star and After the Love has Gone.

The singer-songwriter was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1992 but his condition was reported to have got worse in recent months.

Earth, Wind & Fire were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and Maurice was individually inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010.

Photo: Reuters/Faisal Al Nasser/Files

 

Moscow is monitoring how the situation unfolds regarding the possible deployment of Saudi military forces to Syria, Kremlin spokesman Dmity Peskov said Friday, reports.

Earlier in the day, the Guardian newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia could send thousands of ground forces to Syria, most likely in coordination with Turkey, in order to take part in the fight against ISIS.

“Naturally, we are carefully monitoring the situation,” Peskov said.

He added that the Kremlin currently does not have any facts confirming the validity of the reports on the Saudi plans.

Moscow has been conducting air strikes against IS and Nusra Front targets in Syria since September 30, at Damascus’ request.

is privileged to stand at the forefront in establishing the Armenian Genocide as a distinct focus of doctoral study, setting a landmark on Jan. 5, when Khatchig Mouradian became the first student to complete a Ph.D. in Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Mouradian defended his dissertation, Genocide and Humanitarian Assistance in Ottoman Syria (1915-1917), before Professors Taner Akҫam and Debórah Dwork, who served as co-directors of his dissertation committee. Raymond Kévorkian, Director of the Nubarian Library in Paris, served as the third committee member.

“This graduation marks a historic turning point in Armenian Genocide research,” Akçam said during a celebration to honor Mouradian, held Jan. 29 in the Strassler Center’s Rose Library.

“He is not only the first Doctor of our Armenian Genocide track but also the first doctorate in North America after so many years of silence in the field.”

The event also celebrated Asya Darbinyan, a third-year doctoral student who defended the prospectus of her dissertation, Russian Response to the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarian Assistance for Armenian Refugees on the Caucasus Frontline of WW1 (1914-1917).

Dwork, director of the Strassler Center, commented on both milestones: “The award of the first Ph.D. in Armenian Genocide Studies is a huge step forward in the field. Happily, the first recipient is followed by a robust pipeline of students pursuing groundbreaking dissertation projects. The Armenian Genocide continues to be beset by deniers. These young scholars’ research shows how risible such arguments are. Scholarship trumps propaganda.”

Mouradian is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University and is the coordinator the Armenian Genocide Program at Rutgers’ Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR). He teaches courses on imperialism, mass violence, and concentration camps in the history and sociology departments at Rutgers. Mouradian is also an adjunct professor in the philosophy and urban studies departments atWorcester State University, where he teaches courses on urban space and conflict in the Middle East, genocide, collective memory, and human rights.

Mouradian was the editor of the Armenian Weekly from 2007-2014. The recipient of numerous awards, Mouradian held the Gulbenkian Armenian Studies research fellowship in 2014 to study the Armenian community in China in the 20th century. The Organization of Istanbul Armenians awarded him the first Hrant Dink Freedom and Justice Medal in 2014.

Carolyn Mugar and her late husband John O’Connor ’78, who was a Clark University trustee, donated the first-ever endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History and Armenian Genocide Studies at any university. They challenged others to join them in supporting this innovative professorship named in honor of Carolyn’s parents Stephen and Marian Mugar, as well as Robert Aram ’52 and Marianne Kaloosdian. Clark alumnus Robert Kaloosdian, a lawyer in Watertown, MA, and former president of the Washington, D.C.-based Armenian National Institute, is a leader in Armenian affairs. In 2002, the Kaloosdian Mugar Chair was established in the History Department and as a constituent member of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“The award of the first Ph.D. in Armenian Genocide Studies is a huge step forward in the field. Happily, the first recipient is followed by a robust pipeline of students pursuing groundbreaking dissertation projects. The Armenian Genocide continues to be beset by deniers. These young scholars’ research shows how risible such arguments are. Scholarship trumps propaganda.” ~ Debórah Dwork

Taner Akçam joined Clark University as Kaloosdian/Mugar Professor in fall 2008. A leading genocide scholar and an authority in the history of political violence and torture in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey, Akçam is the first scholar of Turkish origin to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and to publish groundbreaking research on this topic.

Clark University is committed to scholarship and inquiry that addresses social and human imperatives on a global basis, and has played a prominent role in the development of several academic disciplines, including psychology, geography and interdisciplinary environmental studies. The pioneering Strassler Center program in Armenian Genocide Studies embodies the University’s history of academic innovation.

 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin held a meeting with the EU Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Herbert Salber.

The parties discussed the situation in the South Caucasus in the context of the complex international situation, fight against terrorism and threats to security and stability in the region.

Special attention was paid to the situation at the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Pope Francis will hold a historic first meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba next week, the BBC reports.

The Russian Orthodox Church said the “persecution of Christians” would be the central theme of the meeting.

Pope Francis will stop over in Cuba on his way to Mexico.

It is the first meeting of its kind since a schism between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity emerged in the 11th Century.

The meeting is due to take place at Havana airport, where the two leaders will sign a joint declaration.

Patriarch Kirill is due in Cuba for an official visit at the same time as Pope Francis’ stopover in Havana.

In a joint statement, the two churches said the meeting would “mark an important stage in relations between the two churches”.

They invited ” all Christians to pray fervently for God to bless this meeting, that it may bear good fruits.”

Since becoming Pope in 2013, Pope Francis has called for better relations between the different branches of Christianity.

“The OSCE Minsk Group is not satisfied with the status quo,” US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group said in a Twitter post

“We are fully committed to negotiations for a peaceful settlement,” he added.