Dr. Richard Hovannisian on preserving oral histories
“Given a purpose and meaning”

Dr. Richard Hovannisian, who died in July 2023 at the age of 90, was one of the world’s foremost scholars of Armenian history and the Armenian Genocide. A child of survivors, he founded the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project at UCLA in 1969, recording interviews with more than 1,000 genocide survivors. Dr. Hovannisian reflects on why he donated the collection to the USC Shoah Foundation in 2018.