James R. Russell

Russell was born in New York City and grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. His parents are Jewish: his mother's ancestry was Sephardic and his father's ancestry was Ashkenazic. He was educated at The Bronx High School of Science in New York City, Columbia University [B.A. summa cum laude 1974], and the University of Oxford [B.Litt. 1977], under the noted Armenologists Nina Garsoïan and Charles Dowsett. He attended Oxford as the recipient of a Kellett Fellowship awarded on graduation from Columbia.

He earned his Ph.D. at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), under the direction of Dr. Mary Boyce. His 1982 Ph.D. thesis was on the topic of "Zoroastrianism in Armenia" and later published by Harvard University Press.

Soon after finishing his Ph.D. he taught at Columbia University in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELAC). He then became a Lady Davis Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Soon after he was appointed to the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at Harvard University, which he has occupied since 1993. He also teaches a wide range of subjects, including freshman seminars on literature and comparative religions, literature and cultures.[3]

Dr. Russell serves on the executive committees of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He has taught and lectured in Armenia, India, and Iran and at the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University. He was Government Fellowship Lecturer at the Cama Institute in Bombay, India.[4]

Russell has been called, "A complex figure... (who) resists easy classification and is no stranger to controversy: reviled by Turks and Armenians alike." [5]

He has been interviewed as an expert and scholar on The History Channel's documentary programs including Angels: Good or Evil.[6]

Russell has been one of the three faculty advisers for the conservative fortnightly The Harvard Salient.

He lectured on Soteriology on the Silk Road for the Buddhist Lecture Series of the University of Toronto in October 2005, and organized and chaired an international symposium in the same month to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of Saint Mesrop Mashtots, inventor of the Armenian alphabet. He has written on, translated, and analyzed the esoteric, mystical, and spiritual aspects of the writings of Gregory of Narek, and has written numerous articles for the Encyclopædia Iranica. He contributed to the New Leader magazine.

Ninety one of his selected published scholarly journal articles, are gathered in his book, Armenian and Iranian Studies.

Russell's writings were criticised by Armenian historians Armen Ayvazyan [7] and Armen Petrosyan,[8] who conclude that Russell is making gross factual mistakes together with unsubstantiated and tendentious claims on Armenian history and culture. Ayvazyan considers Russell, along with a number of other leading American armenologists, to be one of the representatives of the "false Western school of Armenian studies".[9] Bert Vaux, an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University, claims that Russell's "chair [of Armenian Studies] is actually hurting the [Armenian] community at this point. When you call the Armenians neo-Nazis, that isn't helping the community and it's not leaving it alone - it's hurting it. You are providing fodder for people that want to attack the Armenians." [10]

In his speech at the conference "Rethinking Armenian Studies: Past, Present, and Future" on October 4, 2002 at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, Russell cautioned the audience against the "conspiracy theories, xenophobia, and ultra-nationalist pseudo-science [which] have come increasingly into the mainstream of Armenology in the Armenian Republic" and which have found sympathetic outlets in some of the diasporic press, where paranoia and anti-Semitism have been notably present. "It is a task of the community to set its house in order because these trends are in the end suicidal," he warned. Although Prof. Russell declines to debate such issues, he stated that "I will help with my pen what I still believe to be the great majority of Armenians to expose and destroy the sort of people who are not only dragging our field, but possibly the community itself into dangerous territory".[11]

Professor Russell is the son of Dr. Charlotte Sananes Russell,[12] a Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the City College of New York, and Joseph Brooke Russell, an attorney and arbitrator in New York.[13] His grandfather, Sidney A. Russell, was a founder and president of Russell & Russell, publisher of out-of-print scholarly books.[14]

• James Russell on «Vardanank» on YouTube
• Professor James R. Russell's page at Harvard University
• Review of Dr. Russell's Armenian and Iranian Studies by Dr. Michael Stone
• The Harvard Crimson article on Russell's Literature Humanities course. January 20, 2006.
• Harvard University Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Newsletter, Spring 2004. Special mention of Prof. Russell having published a translation and study, with the Armenian text, of "The Book of Flowers". )archived November 2004)
• Harvard University Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Newsletter, Spring 2006, cf. page 4. (archived June 2006)
• Harvard University Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Newsletter, Fall 2006, cf. page 6. (archived December 2006)
• Ziabariby Kourosh, "Interview with Prof. James Russell: Iran should return to its former global position again", Ovi magazine, 2008-12-30