Poland Begins Crackdown on Academic Officials

Poland’s Communist authorities, acting under a new law curbing academic freedom, have begun a nationwide purge of university administrators whose political views are deemed unacceptable.

At least 40 administrators at 14 academic institutions in Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, Krakow, Wroclaw and other cities were summarily removed from office late last week, with no public announcement, according to unofficial academic sources in Warsaw.

These sources said the total number of dismissals is likely to run much higher as reports continue to filter in from across the country. Most of the officials had been democratically elected to their posts by academic senates, with student participation.

Among the university rectors, vice rectors and deans and department heads dismissed from office were several who recently criticized police violence and called for the release of all political prisoners in Poland. At least four other university officials reportedly resigned in the past two days to protest the removal of colleagues.

The dismissals were ordered by Benon Miskiewicz, Poland’s minister of science, higher education and technology, under a law adopted last July that gave the state tighter political control over university personnel, course content and student affairs. An internal government report, leaked to Western journalists last March, portrayed Poland’s 90 institutions of higher learning as hotbeds of anti-Communist political activity.

The law effectively revoked a variety of academic freedoms granted in 1982, when Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s regime was trying to pacify the country’s academic community, much of which still sympathizes with the outlawed Solidarity union. Many Polish intellectuals, along with Western diplomats, regarded enactment of the new law last summer as evidence of a slow but steady drift toward greater repression by the Jaruzelski regime.

It gave the minister of education authority to remove elected administrators and dissolve academic senates. It also suspended student government organizations and allowed police to enter university campuses without permission.

The unannounced dismissals were the first such actions taken under the new law, which contained a clause requiring the state to “review” the acceptability of university personnel by Nov. 30. An official at Warsaw University, who asked not to be identified, said that the minister of education acted on recommendations from the Communist Party, which singled out administrators for dismissal.

Among those removed from their posts were Wladyslaw Findeisen, rector of Warsaw Polytechnic; Franciszek Kaczmarek, rector of Poznan University, and Karol Taylor, rector of Gdansk University. All three were told that they could continue teaching.

“It is purely a Communist party action . . . motivated by revenge, and to show us that we are not safe,” a Warsaw University administrator told the Associated Press.

The official, asking not to be identified by name, added that “our response must be very strong if we want to survive, because I am afraid that this is just the first step.”

Students at several universities were gathering petitions calling for the reinstatement of dismissed administrators.

At Warsaw Polytechnic, about 1,500 students gathered in the institute’s main hall Friday to applaud and cheer ousted rector Findeisen, who urged the students to remain calm. Some presented him him flowers in a gesture of support.

Taylor in Gdansk told Western reporters that a deputy minister of education notified him on Thursday that he was to be removed immediately from his post, without reason or appeal.

“I was simply handed a text saying that the minister has not approved of my person in the post,” Taylor said, and added, “There was no justification and no motive for the decision in the text.

“This has great meaning for Polish education, but I would prefer not to speak about it for understandable reasons,” Taylor said.

Early in November, Taylor criticized police violence and appealed to authorities to respect human rights in a eulogy read to thousands of mourners at the funeral of a 19-year-old Gdansk University student who died after being detained by police. The government asserts that the youth, Marcin Antonowicz, died after leaping from a moving police van and striking his head on the pavement.