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KOSCIUSZKO CHAIR BRIEF HISTORY
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The Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies is an integral part of a
comprehensive effort to share Poland’s culture and history
with the American people. The Chair is the brainchild of Lady
Blanka Rosenstiel. Her individual efforts to spread the good
word about Poland became first institutionalized as the
American Institute of Polish Culture in Miami, FL. The
Institute has sponsored a variety of Polish cultural events
which, logically, led to the idea of endowing a chair that would
serve similar purposes. This would assure the continuity of
the mission of transmitting both the true history and good
news about Poland indefinitely into the future.
Finding a location for the Chair was a major undertaking.
However, among the multitude of her other charitable
endeavors, Lady Blanka Rosenstiel was involved with
Charlottesville’s University of Virginia, its Miller Center in
particular. As its former Director, the gentlemanly Professor
Kenneth Thompson, put it: “like Johnny Apple Seed she
dropped seeds wherever she went for a program on Polish
studies and a Kosciuszko Chair. She helped me remember war
time experiences and efforts at the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Foundation sought to preserve priceless fragments of
Polish culture at universities and centers through Europe,
especially in France.”
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Tadeusz Kosciuszko by Władysław Barwicki
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Professor Thompson participated in the drive to save the
shreds of Poland’s heritage that had suffered under the
onslaught by the Nazis and Communists during the Second
World War. Forty years later, under Lady Blanka’s gentle
prodding, he resolved to help showcase that heritage at the
University of Virginia. In June 1989, he hosted a comparativist
legal conference on the constitutions of the United States,
France, and Poland. After the considerable success of the
conference Professor Thompson hosted, over the next decade,
thirty fora on Polish affairs at the Miller Center. The speakers
included scholars, diplomats, and politicians. Among other
things, UVA’s powers-that-be learned from them that Poland
had Europe’s first written constitution. They also re-discovered
a close friendship between General Tadeusz Kosciuszko,
a Polish-American hero in the War of Independence of the
United States, and Thomas Jefferson, US President and
founder of the University of Virginia. Their copious
correspondence is stored at the university libraries. UVA
seemed then like a perfect home for the Kosciuszko Chair. Now
it needed funds to be brought to life. Lady Blanka, Ron and Pat
Trzcinski, and countless other individual and institutional
friends, including Drs. Stanisławand Barbara Burzyñski, Mrs.
Camille Cebelak, Waldemar Dowiak, Harriet Irsay, Professor
Julian Kulski, Drs. Chris and Maria Michejda, Thaddeus J.
Delekta, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Tenneco, Kosciuszko
Foundation, and many others collected the necessary funds
to endow the Chair. UVA assured us of matching funds from
both the University and the State of Virginia. The fundraising
drive was a success, and the initiative had attracted a faithful
grass-roots following of benefactors, ready to sustain the
operation. On the UVA side, it seemed that the bureaucratic
resistance and academic prejudice against a Polish project
were broken.
In 1998, the Kosciuszko Chair was unveiled at UVA’s Miller
Center with much pomp and fanfare. There was standing room only because “Solidarity” leader Lech Wałęsa was the
key speaker in what was to become The Polish Speakers
Series, a hugely successful endeavor which would
eventually feature a score of the Kosciuszko Chair guests.
At first glance, the Chair’s future appeared secure. Yet,
symptomatic problems developed. First, the gentlemanly
Professor Thompson retired and the new leadership at the
Miller Center grew suddenly uncomfortable about the
congruity of the Kosciuszko Chair’s program with one of
the Center’s main mission -- to study the US Presidency.
Somehow the Chinese Chair functioning at the Miller
Center failed to raise similar concerns. Second, some
questions arose regarding the role that UVA’s Department
of History should play as far as the jurisdiction of the Chair
was concerned. Third, the State of Virginia was
experiencing a budget crunch which resulted in an
unfulfilled pledge of matching funds for the Chair. Fourth,
problems developed while searching for a suitable
candidate. The eminent British historian Norman Davies,
who was to be the original holder of the Chair, declined to
be involved with the American academia after his abysmal
treatment by Stanford University in the mid-1980s.
Then, amazingly, UVA thought that the controversial
sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross was a perfect candidate (the
professor who would write the anti-Polish book, Neighbors,
which presented an unsubstantiated indictment of Poles as
uniquely responsible for a massacre of Jews that was
actually perpetrated by the Nazis during their wartime
occupation of Poland.) In contrast, the benefactors of the
Chair supported the leading historian of modern Poland,
the subtle and incisive Professor Wojciech Roszkowski.
Professor Roszkowski arrived from Warsaw at Charlottesville
in September 2000 to assume the Chair. In May
2001, Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz became his assisting
professor. The latter, was born in Poland, was acculturated
in California, where he also attended college, and received
his PhD at Columbia University.
The Chair embarked on several ambitious projects. In
addition to administering the Polish speakers series,
Professors Roszkowski and Chodakiewicz taught classes
on Polish and Central and Eastern European past aswell as
the Second World War via the Department of History. They
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“Like Johnny Apple Seed she dropped seeds wherever she went for a program on Polish studies and a Kosciuszko Chair. She helped me remember war time experiences and efforts at the Rockefeller Foundation. The Foundation sought to preserve priceless fragments of Polish culture at universities and centers through Europe, especially in France.”
Prof. Kenneth Thompson
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further worked on the monumental Biographical Dictionary
of East and Central Europe, Professor Roszkowski’s ambitious
undertaking with Prof. Chodakiewicz’s assistance.
Meanwhile, between May 2001 and October 2003,
Professor Chodakiewicz also authored and co-edited three
monographs and three collections of essays on Polish
history. The Chair also hosted a few scholars from Poland.
Each of them researched and wrote a serious monograph,
while in Charlottesville. Apparently, some in academia
found rather disturbing the dynamic growth of Polish
studies outside of the politically correct and bigotedly
Polonophobic academic mainstream.
In June 2002, finding the ambiance at UVA increasingly less
hospitable to his endeavors, Professor Roszkowski
resigned his post and returned to Poland. Professor
Chodakiewicz took over the Chair pro tempore. Meanwhile,
the situation of the Chair within the university became
outright untenable.
The income of the endowment, though considerably
increased by the successful investment of that fund,was by
itself insufficient to pay the cost of a full professor. The
matching funds on which both the donors and the University
had relied to make up the difference were not forthcoming
because of a budget crisis in the Virginia legislature. The
University and the AIPC examined all possibilities, and
concluded that the best option was to transfer the Chair
from the University of Virginia to another educational institution where it would have the benefit of matching funds.
An agreement to that effect was signed on March 9, 2005.
Professor Chodakiewicz who, in October 2003, had moved
to the salubrious environment of The Institute of World
Politics: A Graduate School of National Security and International Affairs, in Washington, DC, was asked to
proceed with the work of the Kosciuszko Chair informally.
This arrangement not only enjoyed the support of the Chair’s
old friends, including Lady Blanka Rosenstiel and Ron and
Pat Trzcinski, but also has attracted new friends, including
Lady Blanka Rosenstiel and Ron and Pat Trzcinski, but also
has attracted new friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Adam
Bąk, the Ungar Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation.
Thanks to their generous support Professor Chodakiewicz
was able to finish all ongoing Chair projects and embark
upon several new ones.
Meanwhile, the American Institute of Polish Culture turned
to a score of American Universities, including Princeton,
Harvard, Columbia, Yale, University of Michigan, and
others, to find a home for the Kosciuszko Chair. All of them
failed to meet donor expectations except for the Institute
of World Politics.
First, IWP has pledged to secure matching funds for the
Chair. Second, IWP’s mission of educating leaders for the
defense of decent civilization congruently accommodates
the Chair’s mission to teach Polish traditional values,
culture, and history to Americans because one objective
reinforces the other. Third, IWP honors the donor intent
meticulously, including in supporting Polish studies. Fourth,
IWP founders, supporters, and scholars identify with the
ideals embraced by the friends of the Chair. Fifth, at least
some scholars at the Institute of World Politics are
Polish-Americans, sympathetic to the work of the Chair.
Therefore in June 2008 the Kosciuszko Chair was officially
awarded to the Institute of World Politics. Because it
operated informally at IWP for 5 years, there is no need for
adjustment. The Chair will simply proceed apace with the
projects under way and will develop new ones. At the
moment, its most important non-academic task at hand is
to collect the $1 million in matching funds. This will enable
the Chair not only to fund its operations, but also grant
scholarships to perpetuate interest in the study of Poland
and her people, including their culture and history.
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Kosciuszko and Jefferson:
A Friendship Built on Love of Liberty
Thomas Jefferson |
The friendship between Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Thomas Jefferson began with their common interests in freedom and liberty for their countries. Both men lived in Philadelphia in the late 1790s, and they met frequently, at times almost daily, to discuss important matters of the day. Not only friends, but statesmen who cooperated in their quests to secure independence for their homelands. Kosciuszko left the United States in 1798 on a diplomatic mission on behalf of both countries, a trip that was arranged by Jefferson.
A strong advocate of the Polish cause, Jefferson wrote
regarding Poland’s situation at this time: “A wound was
indeed inflicted on the character of honor in the eighteen
century by the partition of Poland.” Frequent correspondence kept the two in close contact following Kosciuszko’s return to Europe. Jefferson was even elected to the Polish Royal Society of the Friends of Science in 1810. One of their common concerns was the situation of slaves in the United States. In his will, which is in U. VA’s Alderman Library, Kosciuszko left Jefferson his American estate so that it could be used to pursue the causes of freedom and education of American slaves.
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Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies