Poland, in New Crackdown, Curbs Much of Universities’ Autonomy

Poland’s nominal Parliament, brushing aside protests from the nation’s academic community, adopted legislation Thursday that revokes much of the autonomy granted to universities only three years ago under a liberal education law.

University faculty members, youth groups and the Roman Catholic Church raised objections to the new restrictions on academic freedoms during months of public discussions.

Western analysts said the changes in the education law, which are designed to give the Communist authorities tighter control over university personnel, course content and student affairs, are further evidence of a slow, steady drift by the government of Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski toward more repressive measures in dealing with a still-vigorous political opposition.

Much of this dissent is grouped around Solidarity, the outlawed independent labor union movement.

Pro-Solidarity and anti-Communist sympathies are commonplace among students and faculty in Poland’s universities and research institutes. The newly amended law gives the state and the Communist Party a variety of tools for rooting out these sentiments, or at least for driving them further underground.

Five members of the 460-seat Sejm, including all of its independent Catholic members, voted against the education bill, and nine others abstained.

Poland is the only Soviet Bloc country in which dissenting voices are regularly heard in the Parliament, but the Sejm is overwhelmingly dominated by the Communist Party and two allied, purportedly independent parties that faithfully approve legislation handed down by the leadership.

The higher education amendments, along with three ancillary bills adopted at the same time, effectively cancel many of the democratic freedoms gained by the universities during the Solidarity era five years ago. These became law in May, 1982, at a time when the government sought to demonstrate its commitment to liberalizing political reforms. While leaving a number of these freedoms formally in place, the revised law gives the government virtually unlimited authority to override them when the education minister deems it necessary.

Faculty senates may still elect the rectors, or heads, of universities, but now they must first submit the names of candidates to the government, which may veto them. The education minister is also empowered now to fire rectors, their deputies and faculty deans, to overrule or suspend decisions by faculty senates and councils and even to dissolve these bodies.

Student self-government is to be reined in, and state-sponsored youth organizations--which attract only a small minority of Polish youth--are to gain a larger voice in student affairs.

Also, barriers to police actions on university campuses have now been removed. The 1982 law prohibited police from entering a university except when summoned by the rector or his deputy, or in the event of danger to human life. Now, police officers may enter “upon receiving information about the perpetration of a crime.”

Faculty members at Warsaw University said this would apparently include such offenses as a student’s possession of underground literature or the holding of an unauthorized political meeting.

Most important, in the view of many critics, is a loyalty oath provision requiring new faculty members seeking promotion to dedicate themselves to the “socialist” education of students. Teachers found to have acted “contrary to the text of the oath” may be fired, while students suspected of illicit political activity may be dismissed automatically, without formal proceedings.

Strong opposition to the bill was voiced in the Sejm by Edmund Osmanczyk, an independent deputy, who warned that these changes “will bring deep, irreversible social damage for the future Sejm and for the country.” Osmanczyk accused Education Minister Benon Miskiewicz of refusing to listen to critics of the bill, and he said it was wrong to insist on passing such a controversial measure only two months before nationwide parliamentary elections.

“In this stubbornness, there is a method of ignoring the opinions of educated people, social councils, of high-ranking scientific and social authorities in key fields in our life,” Osmanczyk said.

The education minister, however, told the Sejm, as Jaruzelski looked on, that the changes in the law are for “the good of science and the good of Polish higher education.”

“If we didn’t adopt them, . . . it would deepen negative processes, already visible, which could soon develop,” he said, in an apparent reference to anti-Communist and pro-Solidarity activities on campuses.