ANN ARBOR—Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, will deliver the Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic Freedom, titled “Universities in the Twenty-First Century: Perils, Challenges and Prospects,” on Sept. 11 at the University of Michigan.

The annual lecture, open to the public, is named for three faculty members?H. Chandler Davis, Clement L. Markert and Mark Nickerson?who in 1954 were called to testify before a Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. All invoked constitutional rights and refused to answer questions about their political associations. The three were suspended form the University. Markert was subsequently reinstated and Davis and Nickerson were dismissed.

The lecture will begin at 4 p.m. at the Law School’s Honigman Auditorium in Hutchins Hall. U-M Law School Dean Jeffrey S. Lehman will give the opening remarks.

Gregorian served for nine years as Brown University’s president. He was born in Tabriz, Iran, and graduated from Stanford University, where he also earned his Ph.D. in history and humanities.

Gregorian has taught European and Middle Eastern history at San Francisco State College, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1972 he joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty and was appointed Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history. He was founding dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and four years later became its provost.

He served as president of the New York Public Library, an institution with a network of four research libraries and 83 circulating libraries, from 1981 to 1989, when he left to become president of Brown. Since 1993 Gregorian has been an adviser to Ambassador Walter Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation.

Gregorian is the author of the “Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1880-1946.” 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 and Sciences. In 1969 he received the Danforth Foundation’s E.H. Harbison Distinguished Teaching Award.

He serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Gates Learning Foundation, the Aga Khan University, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. The French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese governments have decorated him.

His numerous civic and professional honors include some 50 honorary degrees, including those from Brown, Dartmouth, Drew, and the Johns Hopkins universities and the University of Pennsylvania, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the City University of New York, Rutgers, Tufts, New York University and the University of Aberdeen.

In 1986 Gregorian was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and in 1989 the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Service to the Arts. In 1998 President Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal. He has been honored by various civic, cultural, and professional associations, including the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, the Players Club, PEN-American Center, Literacy Volunteers of New York, the American Institute of Architects, and the Dana Foundation. He has been honored by the city and state of New York, the states of Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and the cities of Fresno, Austin, Providence and San Francisco.

Sponsors of the lecture at U-M are the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund, American Association of University Professors University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Chapter, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, and U-M Office of the President.

For more information, call the Faculty Senate Office, (734) 764-0303.

Vartan GregorianH. Chandler DavisLaw SchoolJohn Simon Guggenheim FoundationInstitute for Advanced StudyEllis Island Medal of HonorAmerican Association of University Professors University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Chapter