Adam Michnik at the UW

We are very pleased to announce that Adam Michnik, his health permitting, intends to visit the University of Washington this spring, April 30-May 4.  Mr. Michnik, former dissident, historian, essayist and one of Europe’s leading journalists, has been Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s first independent daily newspaper, since its inception in 1989.  A life-long activist for human rights, he spent a total of six years in prison between 1965 and 1986 for his opposition to the communist regime. As a longtime advisor to Solidarity, Mr. Michnik participated in the Roundtable negotiations that ended communist rule in Poland and was subsequently elected to Poland’s first non-communist parliament in 1989.  In recognition of his untiring work on behalf of democracy and journalistic freedom, he has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1986, the OSCE Prize for Journalism and Democracy in 1996 and, most recently in 2006, the Dan David Prize for being the journalist most associated with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the rise of freedom in Eastern Europe.  He is scheduled to deliver a public lecture, “Revolution's Aftermath: Twenty Years of Polish Democracy” , in the UW PESC Distinguished Speakers Series on April 30, 7pm, Kane Hall 220. This event will be co-sponsored by numerous UW departments including the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies and the European Union Center of Excellence.

 

Friday, May 2, 2008

Reception in Honor of Adam Michnik

7:30PM at a private residence in Broadmoor

Donation: $75  Reservations required. 

Contact: Martha Golubiec at mgolubiec@comcast.net or call 206.935.7535 by April 28, 2008

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Fund-raising event with Polish baritone  Mariusz Kwiecień

 

“Polish Prince…His voice, for one: burnished and rich, with robust carrying power and a ringing high A many a tenor would covet. His good looks, trim physique and agility are also givens…” (The New York Times, March 2, 2008)
 

A Night at the Opera and Up Close & Personal with Extraordinary Mariusz Kwiecień

"A baritone who commands the stage so completely that he seems to suck up all the oxygen," said the Seattle Times about Mariusz Kwiecień.  He brought crowds to their feet with his performance at Seattle Opera’s production of Don Giovanni which earned him the 2006/2007 Seattle Opera’s Artist of the Year award. Not surprisingly, since then he has truly distinguished himself as Don Giovanni, a role he has sung in Vienna, Bilbao, Houston, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Warsaw, and Tokyo.

Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecień, a riveting new superstar in the making, has captured the attention of opera fans far and wide for his striking voice, incisive musicianship, and dynamic stage presence. He appears frequently at the Metropolitan Opera, where he has sung in La Bohème, I Pagliacci, and Don Pasquale. Under the baton of James Levine, he has been Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro and Guglielmo in Così Fan Tutte.  Mariusz Kwiecień opened the 2007/2008 season with a Met’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.  He was also Garment in La Traviata in London Covent Garden. In Chicago he sings the title role in Eugene Onegin then will return to Seattle for his performance as Riccardo in I Puritani. He ends his season at the Santa Fe Opera in the role of Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. This is a sample of his recent schedule, and he has been booked for years to come. 

The UW Polish Studies Endowment Committee invites you to a new production of I Puritani at Seattle Opera on May 10, 2008. A cocktail party at a private residence the following day will provide a rare opportunity to meet Mariusz Kwiecień in person. Your $100 donation will include an opera ticket and the reception with Mr. Kwiecień. To make reservations please contact Ewa Poraj-Kuczewska at EKuczewska@PolishStudiesUW.org or call 206.362.3829 by April 20, 2008.

We promise you as much fun as you had a year ago meeting Ewa Podleś, another Polish Seattle Opera Artist of the Year.  Hope to see you at the event.

Ewa Poraj-Kuczewska

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SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE  TO AMERICANS OF POLISH DESCENT

It is with great excitement that the University of Washington Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures is announcing the launch of the annual UW Polish Studies Scholarships for the UW students interested in studies in Poland between June 2008 and May 2009. The scholarships are offered by the UW Polish Studies Endowment Committee and were made possible by the generosity of supporters and friends of the UW Polish Studies.

Priority will be given to students traveling to Poland to study the Polish language, but support may be also provided to students who would like to pursue other aspects of Polish studies.

Awards of up to $1500 will be offered toward airfare, lodging and/or tuition for students enrolled in an accredited program in Poland.

To apply submit the following required materials:

1. a 2-page essay, in which you explain your intended academic plans and how these funds will assist you (double-spaced, 12 font (Courier, Arial or Times New Roman), with 1-inch margins on all sides;

2. a budget outlining your expenses;

3. one faculty letter of support;

4. an unofficial copy of your transcript.

Applications are due March 2, 2008. A decision will be made by April 6, 2008.

Please send application materials to:

Shosh Westen

Slavic Department, Box 353580

University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195-3580

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Polish Studies Related Courses Offered at The UW    Spring Quarter 2008/09

More Information at: www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/ 
 

POLSH 401
SLN 17598 FIRST-YEAR POLISH
Daily 11:30-12:20 Instructor: K. Dziwirek
5 credits

POLSH 320
SLN 17597 MASTERPIECES OF POLISH LITERATURE AND THEIR FILM INTERPRETATIONS
TWThF 12:30 - 1:20 Instructor: P. Chojnowski
5 credits (VLPA)

SLAV 420 A
SLN 18177 A EASTERN EUROPEAN FICTION
M W 2:30 - 4:20 Instructor: Crnkovic
VLPA 5 credits

SLAV 425
SLN 18178 WAYS OF MEANING: UNIVERSAL AND CULTURE-SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
MTWTh 10:30-11:20 Instructor: Dziwirek
VLPA/I&S 5 credits

More Information at: www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/ 



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UW PSEC: Five Years of History in the Making
by Kat Dziwirek

It is truly amazing to behold creation, to see something arise out of nothing thanks to the good will and generosity of a community. It is hard to believe that five years ago the UW Polish Studies Endowment Committee (UW PSEC) did not exist and it is amazing to contemplate how much we have accomplished since 2002.

April 2002 saw our first outreach event at the University of Washington: Tom Podl’s presentation on “Colors of Identity: Discovering Polish Heritage through Art”. The same year we received two sizable grants from Simpson Center for the Humanities and from Arts and Sciences Exchange Program to organize, during the next two academic years, an outreach speaker series entitled “50 Years of Polish at the UW: Celebrating Polish-American Heritage”. The series was also supported by smaller grants from the Polish Home Association, Polish Home Ladies’ Auxiliary, University of Washington Slavic, History and Jewish Studies Departments, the REECAS Program, and the Seattle Public Library. In 2004 a very generous gift from Izabella and Andrzej Turski enabled us to continue the series, now known as Distinguished Speakers Series, for the next three following years and beyond: Leszek Balcerowicz is scheduled to inaugurate the 2007/08 Series with a lecture next October. One look at the impressive list of events organized by the UW PSEC gives an appreciation of our organization’s vitality and achievements over these past five years (see below).

In addition to the Speakers’ Series, we have held three UW Polish Studies Auctions, which raised over $120,000. In June 2005, we created the UW Polish Studies Endowment Fund with an initial deposit of $35,000 which this year reached $120,000. We developed a unique University of Washington Fulbright Lectureship Grant, which combines funds from the US-Polish Fulbright Commission, the UW’s Ellison Center, and UW PSEC to bring a lecturer in Polish Studies to the university for three years, beginning in 2006/2007. We also established UW Polish Studies Scholarship Fund, which in 2007/08 will be awarded to UW students traveling to Poland to pursue their studies.

The Polish Studies Endowment Fund with $120,000, twenty three Distinguished Polish Speakers’ Series events, the Fulbright Lectureship, the Scholarship Fund: none of these existed 5 years ago. And neither did UW PSEC itself, a grass roots organization of volunteers, whose generosity and dedication to the twin goals of fundraising for an Endowed Chair of Polish studies and educating the Seattle community about Poland are truly awe-inspiring.

 

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Foto:Commitee members with Professor and Mrs. Balcerowicz
at the reception hosted by Shoshanna and Roman Budzianowski.
First row from left to right: K. Untersteiner, M. Grabowska, E. Poraj-Kuczewska,
J. Budzianowski, E. Balcerowicz, K. Dziwirek and A. Burdzy
Second row from left to right: Z. Konofalski, B. McNair,
M. Golubiec, W.Cieslar-Pawluskiewicz, L. Balcerowicz,
R. Budzanowski and K. Burdzy

when economic policies are all too easily politicized and distorted by non-market-building objectives. Difficult as the initial reform period might have been, the stabilization, liberalization and privatization policies introduced then under his leadership took place under a “period of extraordinary politics,” an admittedly short but vital grace period when a permissive consensus on the part of both elites and publics enabled radical reform. After political life routinizes and returns to ‘normal,’ the biggest question is, as Professor Balcerowicz elaborated at the student meeting, “how can good policies be maintained through regime change and beyond as in the case of Chile?”

In addressing this new challenge or mission, two key strategies can be delineated following Professor Balcerowicz’s remarks, one more defensive in character, the other more offensive or proactive.  On the defensive side, it is important to promote, protect and preserve an appraisal of the recent past that does justice to what was overcome and what has been achieved since 1989 in order to offset the negative, politically mobilizing effects of unnecessarily critical or uninformed assessments of his reforms. Accordingly, Professor Balcerowicz reminded his lecture audience of the destructive nature of the communist system, how it might have provided some sort of security but at a very low level of economic development with no rule of law and an unprecedented “scope of control over individual freedom.” Both “Western illusions” regarding welfare under socialist regimes and east European “myths” regarding the responsibility of the state to provide for “free lunches” need to be dispelled by a return to the objective facts of communist development, specifically that, during the communist era, the developmental gap between eastern and southern Europe grew enormously leaving post-communist countries with that much more “backwardness” to overcome. Consequently, an “extremely broad transformation” was needed to move from communism to capitalism; a transformation that “did not neglect institutional change as some observers claim” (especially since “privatization is institutional change) and that did have to take a “radical approach on a broad front with maximum possible speed but at different rates depending on issue areas, e.g. stabilization or liberalization.”   This, and not “shock therapy”, a term Professor Balcerowicz dislikes due to its association with electrical shocks, is a more realistic portrayal of his reform package. Furthermore, due consideration has to be given to the positive outcomes produced by these reforms such as increased life expectancy, declining infant mortality rates, a marked reduction in industrial waste and, correspondingly, a reduction in the negative environmental impact associated with communist economic development, and, most importantly perhaps, the enhanced scope of individual freedom as in both “market and non-market transactions, people establish their own relationships.” Inevitably, more needs to be done to ensure continuing rates of economic growth, government spending needs to be controlled, privatization needs to be completed, unnecessary bureaucratic regulations need to be removed and the judiciary, especially the prosecutors, need to be more efficient and impartial. Most importantly, overcoming the continuing effects of economic backwardness such as high levels of emigration (producing a potential “brain drain”) and the disparity between high west European price levels and much lower east European wage levels, are completely dependent on a sustained rate of growth which, in turn, is dependent on the continuity of good economic policies.
But how can such policies be preserved in the face of growing political populism and the general unpopularity of the market economy? As Professor Balcerowicz himself noted in answer to a question after his lecture, this lack of popularity can be ascribed to a potent combination of socioeconomic interests (as those with a privileged status under communism like miners exchange places with those who held a much lower status under the previous regime like educated people), myths (such as the myth of the “free lunch” and “brotherhood”) and morality (as in the assumption that the “profit motive is bad”). Here, a more offensive, proactive strategy is needed to promote good communication (e.g., “good slogans” to undermine populist appeals) between market oriented elites and the general public. In his meeting with students, Professor Balcerowicz informed us that, precisely in order to foster good political communication in Poland, he has founded a new NGO, (with the acronym “FOR” – “we are for and not against,” he emphasized), which has the following goals: identify the most popular populist beliefs, use psychology and marketing to challenge and overcome these beliefs (for example, through the use of satire and sharp, pointed humor). Most recently, FOR initiated a “get out the vote” campaign, primarily addressed at the younger generation using text-messaging and the internet, which doubtlessly contributed to the 15% increase in electoral turnout in the parliamentary elections and the electoral victory of the Civic Platform, a party much more favorable toward sound economic policies than their opponents.

 Basically, it appears as if this new Balcerowicz mission is designed to foster, by conscious design, the very factors that initially combined spontaneously to support market reforms in Central Europe and the Baltics.  Since these factors, reform linkages, quality of leadership and the politicization of social dissatisfaction (as Professor Balcerowicz pointed out in his lecture, it is “bad reasoning” to conclude that because there is social dissatisfaction, the reforms –his reforms—must be wrong),  played such an important role, according to Professor Balcerowicz, in “determining the difference in the rate and success of reforms in the former Soviet bloc,” they might well be of equal importance in determining when and where good economic policies persist beyond regime transition. Hence, the new mission is to promote “positive reform linkages” whereby market reform or continued good economic policies are linked to positive, highly desirable non-economic objectives, to promote, via the electoral process, a qualified, pro-market leadership and to undermine the populist effort to connect social dissatisfaction to pro-market policies. Given the drive, determination and focus Professor Balcerowicz brings to his work, he is likely to be as successful in these endeavors as in his past undertakings.  
 
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