Human Rights Day

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo on this year’s International Human Rights Day, December 10,2010,  reminded me of a Human Rights Day past, on December 10 1984, when the Polish dissident, Adam Michnik, received his honorary doctorate from the New School for Social Research in a clandestine ceremony in a private apartment in Warsaw.  Such ceremonies not only honor achievements of the past, they also have possible practical promising consequences.  Something I observed as an eyewitness then; something that may be in China’s future now.

As China revealed its repressive nature in its response to the prize, the dignity and critical insight of the dissident was revealed in Liu’s own words, as Liv Ullmann read his “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”

The same pattern occurred in awarding Michnik’s doctorate, though in his case it was a two part story.

Part One: Michnik was scheduled to receive his degree in a university ceremony in New York on April 25, 1984, commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the University in Exile (what would become the New School’s social science graduate school in which I am a professor) by honoring human rights activists from around the world.  Because Michnik was imprisoned as part of a martial law crackdown on independent thinkers and political and labor activists, Czeslaw Milosz accepted the honorary degree on his behalf and read from his “Letter for General Kiszczak”, in which Michnik declined an offer of exile as the condition for release from prison.

The Polish Nobel Laureate for Literature read the democratic activist’s passionate denunciation of his interior minister jailer and Michnik’s justification of his commitment to human rights: “the value of our struggle lies not in its chances for victory but rather in the values of its cause.”  He explained in the letter how his refusal of a comfortable exile was an affirmation of these values, keeping them alive in Poland.

Part Two of the story actually occurred on International Human Rights Day of 1984.  It suggested and led to much more.

I was in Warsaw for the unofficial ceremony presenting Adam Michnik his honorary degree from The New School after he was released from prison as part of a general amnesty.  I met him the day before the event agreeing upon the logistics.

The ceremony, itself, was moving, not a major international event, but still reported by the New York Times.

“In an apartment across the street from Mokotow Prison where he spent two and a half years, Adam Michnik, the Solidarity adviser and activist, received an honorary doctorate Monday from the New School for Social Reseach.

Mr. Michnik accepted the green and white academic hood presented to him by Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the New School, in the living room of Edward Lipinski, the 98- year-old Polish social activist.

It was in this same apartment that Mr. Michnik and his colleagues formed the now banned Committee to Defend Workers, which was known by its Polish initials KOR and which acted as an intellectual support group for the Solidarity movement.”

The week following the ceremony Adam introduced me to his world.  We spoke around his living room table and the kitchen tables of scholars, intellectuals and artists of Warsaw, and also in a room of a patient, Jan Józef Lipski, at the cardiac hospital on the outskirts of the city.

We went to the hospital the day after the ceremony.  Michnik wanted to share with the respected opposition historian his excitement over the honorary degree (an excitement that really surprised me).  They spoke about Lipski’s recent research on inter war Fascism in Poland.  We spoke about the significance of the Pope for independent minded Poles, workers and intellectuals.  This was one of the many conversations Michnik and I had about contemporary history, politics and political theory.  We shared our fascination in the philosophy and political theory of Hannah Arendt.  We also spoke about common friends in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Upon leaving the hospital, Michnik turned to me and proposed, a seminar idea, “now that we are New School colleagues.”  Vaclav Havel, in Prague, György Bence, in Budapest, he in Warsaw and I in New York would organize parallel seminars on the topics we had been discussing during my visit.  The starting point of the discussions would be Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. Each group would read a common assignment, exchange summaries of the proceedings and propose further study.

From 1985 through 1989, the seminar functioned in Budapest, New York and Warsaw.  Political conditions made the seminar impossible in Prague.  The Polish sociologist Jerzy Szacki chaired the Warsaw seminar, because three months after our agreement Michnik was again imprisoned, charged with treason.  There were many twists and turns in the seminar, many interesting discussions and some significant exchanges.  It continued to function into the 90s across the former Soviet bloc.  One of many alternative spaces for free intellectual exchange was established and functioned, a zone of free intellectual life.

Noteworthy from the point of view in December 2010, is that the ceremony on Human Rights Day in 1984, which marked the importance of a human rights commitment as an end in itself, did empower activities that pointed in the direction of 1989, when the repressive regime in Poland and beyond, collapsed.

We know how the Chinese government and other governments have disgraced and distinguished themselves as they responded to Liu’s Prize.  What we don’t know about are the hidden activities, such as my visit with Michnik to the Cardiac Hospital in Warsaw.  Michnik may have been right about the primary value of his actions, but we should note that his actions, along with his colleagues, also led to further quite practical and significant consequences.  In China also?