Over the course of three decades, I had the honor of meeting Robert Morgenthau many times. First as an undergraduate, and then as a graduate student, at Columbia University, I would watch as he carried on the legacy of his grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., America’s Ambassador at Constantinople during World War I.

Ambassador Morgenthau documented the systematic attempt to annihilate the Armenian people under the cover of the Great War, writing that the Ottoman Empire had embarked on a campaign of “race extermination,” a term used more than a generation before the coining of the word “genocide.” Robert Morgenthau talked often of his grandfather’s mission to denounce this terrible crime against humanity. He would appear at rallies held annually at Time Square to commemorate the over one million Armenian victims who died between 1915 and 1923.