VIDEO: Jacek Kucharczyk’s Keynote Speech at “The Shrinking of Democracy” Un-Conference
On July 16-17, we hosted our Shrinking of Democracy Un-Conference in Wroclaw, Poland with an amazing cohort of Europe’s leading scholars and intellectuals, many of whom are alumni of TCDS and the New School. The conference provided a much needed analysis of European democracy in these unsettling times and featured keynote addresses by Agnes Heller and Jacek Kucharczyk! Today we want to share with you Jacek Kucharczyk’s keynote speech, “Resisting Backlash Against Democracy”.
Jacek Kucharczyk is the president of the Institute of Public Affairs, one of Poland’s leading think tanks. He is one of the founders of the Policy Association for an Open Society and serves as a member of the board of directors of the European Partnership for Democracy in Brussels. Kucharczyk is also a member of the Council of the National School of Public Administration in Warsaw. In the 1980s, he was active in the underground student and publishing movement. Kucharczyk frequently comments on European affairs and politics for Polish and international media and has authored and edited articles, reports, policy briefs, and books, including Bridges Across the Atlantic: Attitudes of Poles, Czechs and Slovaks toward the United States; Democracy’s New Champions: European Democracy Assistance after EU Enlargement; and Democracy in Poland 1989–2009: Challenges for the Future.
Kucharczyk received his PhD in sociology in 1999 from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. From 1994 to 1995, he was a fellow at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. He also holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Kent at Canterbury and an MA in English studies from Warsaw University.
