The Justice of Being Heard: Acknowledgment, Memory, and the Work of Peace
Anoush Baghdassarian '17
Anoush Baghdassarian ’17 is a human rights lawyer, litigation associate at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in New York, and co-founder of Rerooted, a nonprofit oral-history and advocacy organization dedicated to preserving Armenian stories and advancing identity and justice. What began as her 2017 Projects for Peace initiative at Claremont McKenna College has grown into a global archive containing more than 500 testimonies from Armenian communities around the world. In 2026, Baghdassarian became the first CMC graduate to receive the Projects for Peace Alumni Award.
Baghdassarian earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School and a master’s degree in human rights studies from Columbia University. She has litigated civil and criminal matters involving atrocity crimes and terrorism in the United States and internationally, including at the International Criminal Court and before the International Court of Justice. At CMC, she studied Psychology and Spanish and completed a sequence in Human Rights, Genocide, and Holocaust Studies. Her connection to the Athenaeum began during her first year, when it hosted Found, a play she wrote about the Armenian Genocide. She now proudly serves on the advisory board of CMC’s Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and credits much of what she's accomplished today to the strong foundation CMC helped her lay.