DENVER, CO — The 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was observed in Denver through several events, including a lecture at the University of Denver featuring Professor Ronald Grigor Suny, a community commemoration headlined by Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, and a proclamation by Governor Jared Polis designating April 24, 2025 as Colorado Day for the Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.
“Colorado’s Armenian community and our supporters came together on the special occasion of the 110th anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide — the greatest atrocity of the Great War — to remember the past and focus on the future through milestone events,” remarked Byuzand Yeremyan, president of Armenians of Colorado, Inc. (AOC), which is Colorado’s oldest and largest Armenian organization.
“We are honored by Governor Polis’s proclamation, by the presence of Mayor Johnston, and by the visit of world-renowned Professor Suny, who shared powerful insights about the enduring messages of the Armenian Genocide. I am grateful to our guests, volunteers, and partners, especially the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies at the University of Denver’s prestigious Korbel School of International Studies and the First Baptist Church of Denver, for making April’s distinguished conversations and remembrances possible,” concluded Yeremyan.
On Thursday, April 24, more than 100 people attended the 110th anniversary Armenian Genocide lecture, titled “110 Years On: What the Armenian Genocide Tells Us,” at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. The event featured opening remarks and introductions by Prof. Aaron Schneider, director of the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies, followed by a keynote lecture and response, and concluded with an audience question-and-answer session.
The night’s keynote speaker was Dr. Ronald Grigor Suny, the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago. Prof. Suny, a leading scholar of Soviet studies, studies of nationalism, and modern Armenian history, and author of over 20 books, discussed the Armenian Genocide’s history and enduring relevance, including by applying genocide scholar Prof. Dirk Moses’s theoretical framework of “permanent security” not only to the Armenian Genocide but also to contemporary events, particularly Israel’s actions in Gaza. The professor’s lecture was based on his February 12, 2025 Journal of Genocide Research article, which is available online as an open-access publication at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2025.2462416.
The discussant response to Prof. Suny’s lecture was delivered by Dr. Simon Maghakyan, a political scientist and a scholar of the emerging field of heritage and security, who is a Gulbenkian Postdoctoral Fellow with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, and a community scholar on Armenia at the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. Maghakyan posed the question of “permanent security for whom,” arguing that it is often forgotten that genocide is typically committed by legitimacy-lacking authoritarian actors — like the three Ottoman Turkish pashas that came to power through the 1913 coup d’état — trying to stay in power and out of prison.
