Dr. Vitaut Kipel is a graduate of the Janka Kupala Belarusian high school in Regensburg (Germany) and holds a doctorate in Mineralogy of the KU Leuven (Belgium). For many years he has served as Chief of the Science and Technology Division of the New York Public Library. In 1975 Dr. Kipel was awarded Eisenhower Captive Nations Proclamation Medal.
Starting from 1982, Dr. Kipel chairs one of the most influential Belarusian émigré research institution — the Belarusian Institute of Science and Arts in New York (BINIM).
Thanks to enormous dedication to the Belarusian diaspora movement, Dr. Kipel served as Vice-Chair of the Belarusian Community in Belgium, founder and director of Belarusian festivals in New Jersey, a teacher at the Belarusian school in Brooklyn. In the 1960’s-1980’s, he also cooperated closely with the Belarusian service of the Radio Free Europe.
Dr. Kipel is well known as the leader of the Belarusian Republican movement in the United States. In 1972-1982 he led the Federation of Belarusian Republican Clubs, in 1974 he was elected as leader of the Republican federation in the state of New Jersey. In 1978-1982 Dr. Kipel led the Council for Ethnicities of the state of New Jersey.
By far the most substantial academic contribution of Dr. Kipel is his book “Belarusans in the United States” (Belarusian edition — in 1993, English edition — in 1999). Thanks to this book, Dr. Kipel can genuinely be considered as the pioneer of the Belarusian diaspora studies. 600-pages long book remains an invaluable source of knowledge about the history of the Belarusian movement in the United States.
Since EHU was founded in 1992, Doctor Honoris Causa degree was awarded to outstanding scholars, statesmen, public, religious, and political figures like Fr. Alexander Nadson, Ales Razanau, Prof. Krzysztof Zanussi, Prof. Sergey Averintsev, Dr. Jonathan F. Fanton, Dr. Hans-Gert Pöttering, Prof. Algirdas Brazauskas and others.