Poland Archives - Page 3 of 9

Art & Design

The Urn

How I Stopped Loving Design

May 21, 2020 • by Marcin Wicha

Despite the disappointment, something very valuable was salvaged from our conversations. We had been sharing our enthusiasm for the writers Jerzy Pilch and Olga Tokarczuk when Pawel introduced me to the work of Marcin Wicha. Wicha is as sardonic as Pilch and Tokarczuk, and like them, he writes about politics. ...

Democracy

Populists Love the Pandemic

Populist rulers are exploiting this crisis to the fullest

April 3, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

WARSAW – Threats to national security invariably limit domestic political disputes. Now that governments have assumed a leading role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the political opposition in countries under populist rule is quickly being marginalized. In theory, the authorities in these countries could use the crisis to invoke a ...

Democracy

Solidarity Means Sharing In Active Freedom

Democracy and The Public Square

February 24, 2020 • by Elzbieta Matynia

“Democracies are not going to defend themselves. It is we the citizens who have to defend them. I believe it is not too late.” -- Adam Michnik, New School Centennial Lecture, October 2019 How can we resist the retreat from our beleaguered democracies and hold onto the embattled freedom we still have? I ...

Solidarity Means Sharing In Active Freedom

History

Thou Shalt Not Be Indifferent

February 5, 2020 • by Ben Stanley

--- Dear friends, I am one of the few still alive of those who remained in this place almost until the very last moment before liberation. My so-called evacuation from Auschwitz began on the 18th of January. Over the next six and a half days it would prove a death march ...

Democracy

30 Years Ago, A Moment of Joy and Hope

December 13, 2019 • by Adam Michnik

*** I clearly remember that November evening. In my country, Poland, events of great importance were taking place. Poland’s first non-Communist government had already been operating for three months. The prime minister was Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a broad-minded catholic intellectual and long-standing advisor to Lech Wałęsa. Just at that time, a delegation from the Federal Republic ...

From the Editors

The View from Europe

And it ain’t good

November 5, 2019 • by Claire Potter

It’s refreshing to spend time in a place where everyone isn’t obsessed with the Occupant of the White House, but it’s also now strange to be in Berlin, a place where the United States was once so relevant -- and is now so irrelevant. A colleague from Croatia told me kindly that America ...

Europe & Central Asia

How Poland Ruined its 1989

A liberal democratic dream too good to be true

October 24, 2019 • by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

The first half of 1989 in Poland was amazing -- delivering early and decisive blows to the Berlin wall, which fell later that year. From February to April 4th, the representatives of the Polish government negotiated with the Solidarity oppositional groups; in June, in partially free elections, the communist government ...

Europe & Central Asia

The Façade of Justice in Poland

Undermining the rule of law, hiding social inequality

October 15, 2019 • by Paweł Marczewski

Although social transfers do consolidate support for Law and Justice, especially among the new voters of the party, they are not a simple economic transaction, in which political support is exchanged for money. The welfare transactions are perceived as a symbol of a new beginning after three decades of austerity ...

Europe & Central Asia

Varieties of Gendered Populism

The case of Poland

September 17, 2019 • by Elżbieta Korolczuk

These developments suggest there is a tight connection between right-wing populism and opposition to gender equality and sexual democracy. Just like there is a clear pattern of gendered nationalism, there appears to be also a trend towards gendered populism. As Ruth Wodak pointed out in her seminal book Politics of fear, ...

Feature

The Dyer’s Hand

Ann Snitow’s retirement from The New School

August 13, 2019 • by Ann Snitow

Ann Snitow gave the following talk on the occasion of her retirement from The New School on April 9, 2019. In their introduction, the two current directors of Gender Studies, Margot Bouman and Lisa Rubin, pointed out that Snitow, now emeritus, had the distinction of having founded the Gender Studies ...

The New School

Sex for Fun: Reflections From Ann Snitow’s Przegorzały Classroom

Ann Snitow helped change the discussion around sexuality in Poland, and she also changed my life.

August 12, 2019 • by Agnieszka Kościańska

In 2017, I published a book about the history of sex education in Poland. To See a Moose describes how Polish sex education textbooks under state socialism and after dealt with sexuality related issues. Although in many ways progressive, these books treated sex elliptically. Instead of talking about sex, they were full ...

Feature

The Unplanned Heroes of Białystok Pride

Anti-LGBT violence displays the homophobic political and religious rhetoric in Poland — but it didn’t crush the parade.

August 1, 2019 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Police officers, almost as many in number as the Pride crowd, used teargas to separate the parade from the anti-LGBT protesters. After Pride ended, some of the marchers were chased and beaten by the latter, mostly young men. The police say over three dozen violent offenders were detained. The reports, images, and ...