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Vartan Gregorian (born April 8, 1934 in Tabriz, Iran) is a distinguished American academic, currently serving as the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. After receiving his dual Ph.D. in history and humanities from Stanford University in 1964, Gregorian served on the faculties at several American universities before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he became the founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1974, and the provost in 1981. From 1981 to 1989, Gregorian served as president of the New York Public Library, an eight-year tenure which would prove one of his most lasting legacies. In 1989, he was chosen to become president of Brown University, where he served until 1997. In 1995, he was offered the presidency of Columbia University, which he declined due to his commitment to Brown's capital campaign. In 1997, he was selected as president of the philanthropic Carnegie Corporation of New York, his current position as of 2006. He is also a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has received the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Gregorian is on the advisory board of USC Center on Public Diplomacy and is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. 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 also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts of Sciences. He has also received (as of 2006) honorary degrees from fifty-six institutions. He documented much of his private life in his 2003 autobiography The Road to Home: My Life and Times.
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