Ivo Banac, a historian of Eastern Europe who taught at Yale from 1977 until his retirement in 2009, died on June 30 at the age of 74. Banac died after an illness in Zagreb in his native country of Croatia, where he had taught and served in several prominent political positions since leaving Yale.

Banac, the Bradford Durfee Professor of History Emeritus, focused his teaching and scholarship on the Balkans. He served two terms as head of college for Pierson College, from 1988 to 1995, and also chaired the Council on Russian and East European Studies at Yale.

Coinciding with his time at Yale, Banac served from 1995 to 1999 as professor of history at the Central European University and was also director of its Institute on Southern Europe. Since 2008 he was a professor of history at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, and was also a mentor to doctoral students in history at the Croatian Catholic University of Zagreb. He was the honorary head of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology.

In the political sphere, Banac was the minister of environmental protection and physical planning in the Republic of Croatia in 2003, president of the Croatian Liberal Party 2003-2004, and a deputy of the Croatian Parliament 2004-2007. He was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 2004-2008 and also served as chair of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, which assists cases on human rights violations.