Vahakn Norair Dadrian (; 26 May 1926 – 2 August 2019) was an Armenian-American sociologist and historian, born in Turkey, professor of sociology, historian, and an expert on the Armenian genocide.
Life
Dadrian was born in 1926 in Turkey to a family that lost many members during the Armenian genocide. Dadrian first studied mathematics at the University of Berlin, after which he decided to switch to a completely different field, and studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, and later, international law at the University of Zürich. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago. Dadrian understood many languages, including German, English, French, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, and Armenian, and worked in the archives of different countries. Thomas de Waal suggests that Dadrian's research was motivated by a political agenda, noting that Dadrian wrote a 1964 letter to The New York Times asking: "on what conceivable grounds can the Armenians be denied the right to reclaim their ancestral territories which Turkey absorbed after massacring their inhabitants?"
He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree for his research in the field of Armenian Genocide Studies by the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, and later, in 1998, he was made a member of the academy and honored by the President of Armenia, the republic's highest cultural award, the Khorenatzi medal. In 1999, Dadrian was awarded on behalf of the Holy See of Cilicia the Mesrob Mashdots Medal. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sponsored him as director of a large Genocide study project, which culminated with the publication of articles, mainly in the Holocaust and Genocide studies magazines. He was the keynote speaker at the centennial of the John Marshall Law School and delivered a lecture to the British House of Commons in 1995. He also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He has lectured extensively in French, English and German in the Free University of Berlin, the Universities of Munich, Parma, Torino, Zürich, Uppsala, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Bochum, Münster, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Geneva, Brussels and UNESCO’s Paris center.
In 1970–1991 Dadrian was a professor of sociology at State University of New York-College at Geneseo.
Dadrian was the director of Genocide Research at Zoryan Institute.
Death
Dadrian died on 2 August 2019, at the age of 93. After his death, the President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian sent a letter of condolences to Dadrian's family and friends. In accordance with his wishes, his remains were cremated and transported to Armenia for burial. Dadrian was buried in Tokhmakh Cemetery in Yerevan, Armenia after a state ceremony and visitation at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
In August 2022, Dadrian's former student and colleague Taner Akçam and others brought attention to the fact that the historian's grave in Yerevan's Tokhmakh Cemetery had been left unmarked and untended. The grave was then cleaned up and a temporary marker was placed. A state burial commission had been established by the Armenian government in 2019 to attend to Dadrian's funeral. The spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia explained on Twitter that work on Dadrian's gravestone had been delayed due to "objective reasons" such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, but would resume soon.
Reception
Roger W. Smith praised Dadrian's book The History of the Armenian Genocide as a "rare work, over 20 years in the making, that is at once fascinating to read, comprehensive in scope, and unsurpassed in the documentation of the events it describes." According to William Schabas, the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, "Dadrian's historical research on the Armenian Genocide is informed by a rich grasp of the legal issues", and "his contribution both to historical and legal scholarship is enormous."
According to David Bruce MacDonald, Dadrian is a "towering figure in the field of Armenian genocide history". Taner Akcam writes that by employing Justin McCarthy's own method of calculating population figures and classifying individuals, Dadrian has shown the ridiculousness of the claim that "the events of 1915 were in fact a civil war between the Armenians and Turks". German Swiss scholar Hans-Lukas Kieser writes that the documents related to fifteen Turkish ministers published by V. Dadrian show best the ministers' conception of their responsibility in the "abuses" committed against Ottoman Armenians.