FOR RELEASE THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1997

CARNEGIE CORPORATION ELECTS
NEW PRESIDENT

NEW YORK, January 9 -- Vartan Gregorian, president of Brown University and former president and chief executive officer of The New York Public Library, has been named president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. Formal action was taken by the Corporation's board of trustees at its annual meeting on January 9.

A nationally admired leader in the field of higher education and the nonprofit sector, Gregorian becomes the Corporation's twelfth president since Andrew Carnegie established the foundation "for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding" in 1911. The Corporation is considered the first general purpose foundation and one of the premier grant-making institutions in the country.

Gregorian will assume office in July, after the end of the current academic year. He succeeds David A. Hamburg, who will remain associated with the foundation as president emeritus, principally as cochair, with former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, launched in May 1994. Hamburg will also be preparing a book on the Corporation's approach to healthy development in childhood and adolescence.

During his fourteen-year tenure, Hamburg has led the Corporation's greatly expanded programs in education and international peace, adding new commitments to advance understanding of child and adolescent development, promote human resource development and democratization in Africa, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the United States, and prevent violent conflict among groups.

Retiring from the board is Newton N. Minow, counsel to the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin, who has served as chairman since 1993 and as a trustee since 1986. He is succeeded as chairman by Thomas H. Kean, president of Drew University, former governor of New Jersey, and a board member since 1991. The board also elected Sam Nunn, former U.S. senator from Georgia, as a trustee for a four-year term.

The Corporation made its choice of president after a nationwide search that began in January 1996. The search committee, led by James A. Johnson, chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, was composed of seven other trustees, who considered a large pool of candidates before reaching unanimous agreement on Gregorian.

Said Johnson of the search committee's recommendation to the board, "Vartan Gregorian is an inspiring and effective leader. The alignment between his interests and those of the foundation is very strong. His background and experience, including his academic expertise and intellectual vitality, promise new perspectives on the foundation's continuing search for solutions to critical human problems. Thus there is a fundamental continuity of values and of commitment to the enduring Carnegie agenda."

Commenting on the choice of Gregorian, Minow, a member of the search committee, said, "The Corporation is extremely fortunate in having attracted to the presidency a person of Gregorian's superb qualifications. While pursuing a distinguished academic career, he has devoted his entire professional life to widening educational opportunity for all people -- an endeavor that has been at the heart of the Corporation's mission since its beginning."

Minow emphasized that Gregorian has had an "abiding concern for the protection and extension of equality of opportunity, in this country and abroad, and for addressing the problems of urban communities, also well within the Corporation's traditions."

Finally, and no less important, said Minow, "Gregorian is extremely knowledgeable about and well prepared for the special requirements and responsibilities of strategic philanthropy. While no one can take David Hamburg's place, Gregorian will be in every sense a worthy successor.

"I am also delighted to be succeeded by Tom Kean as board chair and by Sam Nunn as a board member," said Minow. "This is an excellent board that will serve the foundation well in the years ahead."

Gregorian was president and chief executive officer of The New York Public Library from 1981 to 1989, playing a leading role in revitalizing the public library system. By the time he left to become president of Brown, he had presided over a fund-raising initiative that raised more than $400 million in new funds for the library's acquisition, modernization, restoration, conservation, and preservation efforts.

Known for his warm, ebullient style and wide-ranging interests, Gregorian is also credited as an innovator and indefatigable spokesperson on behalf of the causes he adopts. At Brown, Gregorian marshaled broad support for enhancing the university's core activities in research, instruction, and public service.

Under Gregorian's presidency, the university established eleven departments, including Modern Culture and Media, American Civilization, and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. Nearly 265 faculty members have joined the university, and the physical plant has expanded with the construction of new centers of study and the renovation of major buildings.

In the years since Gregorian's arrival, the university's endowment grew from $373 million to $803 million at the close of the fiscal year in June 1996. Year-end estimates set the endowment's current value at more than $850 million.

Chairman Thomas Kean said, "Members of the board join me in congratulating Vartan Gregorian wholeheartedly on his forthcoming election as the Corporation's new president. We look forward to a fruitful partnership with him and the foundation's staff in the coming years. The twenty-first century will usher in dramatic new challenges for education and human resource development. It demands a leadership that will balance the needs for continuity and change in the Corporation's programs but that also will bring a fresh conceptual eye to the consideration of each. We are confident that Gregorian is the ideal choice for maintaining this balance."

Hamburg said of Gregorian, "I have known and respected Vartan for many years, and I am thrilled that he will be my successor. He has been an intellectual and moral force in higher education and the nonprofit world. His many contributions to the strengthening of American democracy remind us of our country's best attributes. His passionate dedication to widening educational opportunity and enhancing international understanding are well known. But beyond his extraordinary accomplishments, he is one of the warmest, most humane, and most approachable persons I have ever met. I look forward to our collaboration over the next few months and to assisting him in making a smooth transition."

President-elect Gregorian said, " I am honored to become president of an institution that has had such leaders as Frederick Keppel, John Gardner, Alan Pifer, and my great friend David Hamburg. It is difficult to leave a wonderful university like Brown, but this is a unique opportunity. The interests and values that have characterized my entire career come together in Carnegie Corporation's philanthropy. I will do everything in my power to be worthy of this trust."

Vartan Gregorian, an Armenian born in Tabriz, Iran, received his formal education in Beirut, Lebanon, and came to the United States in 1956, entering Stanford University as a freshman. He graduated with a B.A. degree (cum laude) in history and humanities in 1958 from Stanford, where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1964, also in history and humanities. After serving as a Ray Lyman Wilbur Teaching Fellow in Stanford's history department, he launched into a lifelong career of university teaching, which continued even after he became a university administrator and later became The New York Public Library's president.

Between 1960 and 1972, Gregorian rose from an instructor of history at San Francisco State College to full professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin, where he was also director of special programs in the College of Arts and Sciences (1969-71). In 1972 he went to the University of Pennsylvania as professor of South Asian history, professor of history, and Tarzian professor of Armenian and Caucasian history -- positions he held until 1984. During this period he moved into administration, serving as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences (1974-78) and then provost and chief academic officer (1978-80). In 1984, three years after joining The New York Public Library, he assumed a parallel position as University Professor of History at the New School for Social Research (1984-89) and professor of Near Eastern history at New York University (1984-89). Upon joining Brown University as president, he was named professor of history there.

As president of Carnegie Corporation, Gregorian will be a member of the foundation's board of trustees as well.

Gregorian has enjoyed numerous other academic appointments, teaching fellowships, and professional affiliations in his extraordinary career. He holds more than forty honorary degrees from major colleges and universities and is the recipient of many awards, medals, and honors, both domestic and international. His international decorations include the Grand oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique (Portugal, 1995), the Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (France, 1986), and the Cavaliere Ufficiale dell'Ordine Al Merito della Repubblica (Italy, 1986), among others.

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His past and current board memberships of educational, cultural, civic, and governmental organizations include most recently the Museum of Modern Art, the Brookings Institution, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Trust. Gregorian has served as pro bono academic advisor to Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation in deploying the $500 million Annenberg Challenge the Nation, a nationwide initiative for effective school reform.

His activities in human rights cover membership of the Committee for International Academic Freedom, Human Rights Watch/Free Expression Project, and the International League of Human Rights. In addition to sitting on the editorial boards of a number of prestigious publishing houses and journals, he is the author of The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946 (Stanford University Press, 1969) and two other books and of many articles and book chapters, concentrating on Near Eastern and Armenian history.

Gregorian is married to the former Clare Russell, whom he met as a graduate student at Stanford. In Providence, Mrs. Gregorian has been involved with issues of children and families, with public libraries, and with Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island. The Gregorians have three adult sons: Vahe, Raffi, and Dareh.

As president of the Corporation, Gregorian will lead a foundation with more than $1.3 billion in assets and with a long history of concentration on social issues, child development, and elementary and secondary education. The foundation provides grants totalling $59 million annually.

Newton Minow, retiring as chairman of the board, has led national efforts to improve the quality of television programming, especially as it affects young children. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President John F. Kennedy, he referred to the medium as a "vast wasteland" and enumerated the ways that it should -- but fails to -- serve the public interest. He has written extensively on the media, most recently Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment, published by Hill and Wang in 1995, and has worked with several groups examining the impact of information technologies on democratic processes.

Thomas Kean, president of Drew University, who succeeds Newton Minow as chairman, received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University and earned a master's in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He taught high school history before winning a seat in the New Jersey State Assembly in 1967. Elected governor in 1981, he served two consecutive terms. Kean has long been a champion of education reform, supporting innovative approaches to alternative teacher certification, signing legislation that established challenge grants for state colleges, raising teachers' salaries, and increasing student standards. His autobiography, The Politics of Inclusion, was published by The Free Press in 1988.

Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn has become one of the leading figures in American government and an internationally recognized expert on national security and economic policy. First elected to the Senate in 1972, he served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He has focused his efforts on strengthening America's defenses, reducing the threat of nuclear war, improving international relations, developing a comprehensive anti-drug strategy, and restoring fiscal responsibility and accountability to the federal government. He earned his bachelor's and law degrees at Emory University.

In the years prior to David Hamburg's presidency, the Corporation invested heavily in educational improvement at all levels of the formal education system in the United States and in certain Commonwealth countries. It also promoted adult education and the growth of high-quality informal learning systems, including the expansion of public libraries and the positive educational uses of television and other electronic media, for children and adults. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Corporation promoted widely expanded educational opportunities for disadvantaged minority members and women and girls. Of equal priority was its support of research and experimental programs leading to better understanding of the cognitive capabilities of preschool children. From these combined interests emerged the Corporation's commitment to establish the Children's Television Workshop and the public television program for children, Sesame Street, among other developments.