ANTELIAS, Lebanon (A.W.)—His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, recently bestowed the “Prince of Cilicia” medal—the Catholicosate’s highest honor—to two leading Diasporan Armenian intellectuals, Richard Hovannisian and Yervant Pamboukian.
The ceremony came at the conclusion of a three-day conference on the Centennial of the Republic of Armenia, which took place at the Catholicosate on March 21-23.
In his remarks, the Catholicos praised the two intellectuals for their decades-long careers in Armenian Studies. He explained that the two historians were lucky enough to study under the first Armenian Republic’s last Prime Minister Simon Vratsian and that they were “disciples of a free and independent Armenia.”
Hovannisian was one of the founders of Armenian Studies as a discipline in the United States. He is the author of Armenia on the Road to Independence, the four-volume history The Republic of Armenia, and has edited and contributed to more than 35 books, including The Armenian Genocide in Perspective; The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times; Remembrance and Denial; Looking Backward, Moving Forward; The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies; as well as many others. A member of the UCLA faculty since 1962, he was the first holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History, which is today renamed in his honor, and is presently an adjunct professor at USC, advising the Shoah Foundation on its Armenian Genocide testimony collection. He is also a presidential fellow at Chapman University. The Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection was officially announced as a part of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive at a ceremony on March 9.
Pamboukian has taught Armenian History in numerous Armenian schools and institution in Beirut, including the Hamazkayin Djemaran (1958-2002), the Cilicia Catholicosate Seminary (1958-1970), and the Souren Khanamirian Armenian School (1965-1970). He has served as the editor-in-chief of the Aztag Daily newspaper (1970-1978) and as the principal of the Hamazkayin Higher Institution of Armenian Studies (1979-2005). Since 2005, Pamboukian has edited and written Armenian History textbooks and other studies, including the third and the fourth volumes of Nikol Aghbalian’s Yerker. The is also the author of The Organizing Structure of Armenian Revolutionary Federation as well as volumes five to 12 of Materials On The History of the A.R. Federation.
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