Gerard Libaridian to Present New Book “Precarious Armenia” at NAASR

BELMONT, MA — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will present a hybrid (in-person and online) talk by Dr. Gerard J. Libaridian on Tuesday, September 12, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern) / 4:30 pm (Pacific), in which he will discuss his new book “A Precarious Armenia: The Third Republic, the Karabakh Conflict, and Genocide Politics.”

This program is presented as part of the NAASR / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues and will be held at the NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.  It is free and open to the public.  Copies of A Precarious Armenia will be available for purchase and signing by the author.

The webinar will be accessible live on Zoom (registration required) and on NAASR’s YouTube Channel. To register go to https://bit.ly/NAASR-Libaridian.

In his newest publication of selected essays and interviews, A Precarious Armenia (Gomidas Institute, 2023), Gerard J. Libaridian explores a number of fundamental issues regarding Armenia’s foreign and security policies and scrutinizes the political culture as the framework within which positions have been defined and solutions have been sought.

The previously published and unpublished material analyzes the political thinking that characterized the response to challenges the Third Republic faced and failed to address from the standpoint of statehood versus a vague but powerful nationalism. Libaridian considers themes such as Armenia and Armenians as agents of their own history as opposed to the dominant sense of victimhood, maximalism confused with patriotism, the role of mediators and other states as saviors, and the comfort zone of illusions and legends as opposed to hard realism and pragmatism.

Dr. Gerard J. Libaridian served as senior adviser to the former President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan and was the Director of Armenian Studies Program and held the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of Michigan.  He is the author of numerous books including The Challenge of Statehood: Armenian Political Thinking since Independence (1999) and Modern Armenia: People, Nation, State (2007).