A path that has led an unlikely world leader from electrician to labor organizer to the first democratically elected president of Poland will now bring the Nobel Peace Prize winner to Western Carolina University when Lech Walesa visits campus Monday, Nov. 5.

Walesa, who will be at WCU as part of the Chancellor’s Speaker Series for 2001-02, will speak on the topic “Democracy: The Never-Ending Battle” at 7:30 p.m. in WCU’s Ramsey Regional Activity Center. The program, open to the public free of charge, will include a question-and-answer session.

Walesa also will take part in an informal program open only to WCU students. The session will be held in the Grandroom of the A.K. Hinds University Center at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 5.

Walesa burst into the world spotlight in 1980 during the infamous Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdansk, Poland. Workers, angered by an increase in prices set by the communist government, demanded the right to organize free and independent trade unions.

With the dispirited workers on the verge of abandoning their strike, Walesa, an electrician by trade and long active in the underground labor movement, scaled the barricaded shipyard walls and delivered a stirring speech from atop a bulldozer. Revitalized by his passion, the strike spread to other factories across Poland, and, christened “Solidarity,” the labor movement transformed into a social revolution. Walesa became a leader of the 10 million-member Solidarity Labor Movement, which, despite a crackdown of martial law and the repeated imprisonment of its leaders, prevailed to see the end of communist rule in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Walesa was named Man of the Year for 1980 by Time magazine, The Financial Times, The London Observer and several other international publications. For his efforts, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and President Ronald Reagan praised the success of Walesa and Solidarity as “a victory for those who seek to enlarge the human spirit over those who seek to crush it.” In 1990, Walesa became the first democratically elected president of Poland, winning more than 74 percent of the votes cast. His term in office set the nation on the path to becoming a free market democracy.

Walesa helped transform Poland into a model of economic and political reform for the rest of Eastern Europe to follow, and earned the nation the honor of receiving one of the first invitations to join an expanded NATO. Now retired from politics, he heads the Lech Walesa Institute, an organization designed to advance the ideals of democracy and free market reform throughout the world.

Walesa is the second of three speakers on tap for the WCU Chancellor’s Speaker Series in 2001-02. Up next is former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who will visit Feb. 7.

Now in its fourth year, the series is designed to bring significant figures to campus to discuss major issues of the day, and to provide WCU students with an opportunity to interact with some of the people who shape and influence our world.

Past speakers have included former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, nationally syndicated finance columnist Jane Bryant Quinn, Emmy-nominated actor Danny Glover and fellow performer Felix Justice, U.S. Sen. John Edwards, University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball coach Pat Summitt, explorer Jamie Clarke, and three major players in the effort to unlock the mysteries of the human genetic code.

 

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