When Vartan Gregorian was asked three years ago what it would mean for the United States to recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, he characteristically looked forward, not back. “We intend to remain,” he said. “But what for? And that’s the point.” Gregorian died last week at 87, a beloved former president of the Carnegie Corporation and Brown University, and the savior of the New York Public Library. He didn’t live to see the emotional moment that’s likely to come Saturday, when President Biden is expected to become the first U.S. president to formally affirm the fact of the Armenian genocide. On Saturday, the annual day of remembrance for the 1.5 million victims of the genocide, Gregorian would probably have asked the same question that he posed in the March 2018 interview: “What is our duty as Armenians . . . to prevent others [from] facing the same thing we have faced?” How do we show our compassion for those who are mistreated today, as our ancestors were?

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