American University of Armenia Appoints Pashinyan Allies After Criticism

An AUA representative told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on December 10 that Ghazaryan has been rehired and currently works as an adjunct lecturer there.

On Tuesday, December 9, the university announced that Pashinyan’s chief adviser, Lilit Makunts, has been appointed as a new member of its Board of Trustees, replacing a prominent Armenian academic who died last year. In a statement, it said that she will bring to the board an “extensive record of service in Armenia’s public sector.”

Makunts, 41, taught English at the Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan and reportedly tutored Pashinyan in the foreign language before the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought him to power. She was catapulted to the post of culture minister right after the regime change. She subsequently served as the ruling party’s nominal parliamentary leader and Armenia’s ambassador to the United States.

Earlier this month, the AUA released a video that featured Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan and showed her praising a nursing program launched by its College of Health Sciences in 2022. Avanesyan too had joined in the uproar caused by Farmanyan’s post, saying that the university administration seems to be engaged in a “political persecution” of Armenian government loyalists.

The AUA, which is affiliated with the University of California, was founded in 1991 with the help of Armenian philanthropists in the United States as well as Armenia’s first post-Communist government. It has since expanded significantly and become one of the country’s most reputable universities.

[Editor’s Note: The AUA, after this story went to press, offered an explanation for some of the claims of this article. It took exception to the tenor of the piece, and explained the structure of the university’s board. The American University of Armenia Foundation (AUAF), of which Dr. Makunts recently became a board member, is AUA’s legal entity in Armenia, and it in turn has two founding organizations, namely the Government of the Republic of Armenia (RA) and the American University of Armenia Corporation (AUAC), the latter being AUA’s legal entity in the United States. The AUAF Board of Trustees consists of seven members. Five are appointed by AUAC and the other two by the Government of the RA. If a member’s position becomes vacant, the respective founder proposes a new member.

As reflected in the published AUA article, Dr. Makunts was nominated to fill a vacancy of one of the two RA-government-nominated positions on the AUAF board, something the university can do under the AUAF Charter, though they did so in consultation with AUA’s leadership. The university added that all involved in the decision agreed that Makunts’ former position as Ambassador to the United States and her experience as an educator rendered her an ideal candidate for that appointment. Her nomination was unanimously confirmed by the AUAF Board. The university statement also said that any claims that AUA made any appointments in response to criticism it received last summer are fallacious.]