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Former Polish Solidarity leader Adam Michnik to speak at IU
Feb. 24, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Former Polish Solidarity leader Adam Michnik will discuss democracy and national identity at Indiana University next week.
Michnik will present a lecture titled "The Future of Democracy and the Role of the Democratic Intellectual" on Tuesday (Feb. 29) at 7 p.m. in Education Building Room 1120. Michnik and professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, director of the Center on Post-Communism at the University of Maryland and editor of East European Politics, will engage in "A Dialogue on the Question of National Identity" on March 3, 2- 4:30 p.m., at the Indiana Memorial Union in State Room East. IU Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Isaac will serve as the moderator.
Michnik ranks among the most courageous and persuasive public intellectuals of the late 20th century. A historian by training, he first became known to the world as a student activist on behalf of civil liberties and intellectual inquiry. Subjected to harassment, persecution and imprisonment, he became a leader in the Worker's Defense Committee and a central adviser, publicist and activist in the Solidarity movement. His six-year imprisonment by the military regime in the 1980s did nothing to stem the outpouring of his writings, published in English as Letters from Prison and Other Essays (University of California Press, 1985). In 1986, he received an RFK Human Rights Award for his work opposing the Polish communist regime.
With the demise of communism, Michnik has continued to function at the center of Polish public culture as a social critic, political commentator and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest daily newspaper in Poland. In that capacity, he has remained a prominent and courageous defender of intellectual openness and democratic civility. His numerous essays, articles, speeches and interviews are collected in his recent book Letters from Freedom (University of California Press, 1998).
For more information about Michnik's appearances at IU, contact the IU Polish Studies Center at 812-855-1507.
(Jen McCormick, 812-855-5393, jenmccor@indiana.edu)