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Right-wing ruling party secures four more years in power, and promises controversy
Scholars in Poland have expressed concern about funding for research, and academic freedom, after the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party was re-elected on 13 October.
“Funding for Polish research is at rock bottom,” said Emanuel Kulczycki, head of the scholarly communication research group at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Beata Zwierzyńska, a doctoral researcher at the University of Lower Silesia and Masaryk University and an advocate for gay rights, said that “universities are taking care not to do anything that draws attention” due to fears their freedoms could be curtailed.
The party, known by its acronym Pis, won 235 seats in the Sejm lower chamber—four more than the 231 needed for a majority. It lost control of the senate upper chamber, however.
Pis has presided over an economic boom and it returned to power having passed popular reforms, including scrapping income taxes for those under 26 and lowering the retirement age.
But it has been criticised for its anti-gay stance and for weakening Poland’s court system, and its radical reforms to academia in August 2018 that sparked student protests.
These reforms included increasing rectors’ power over budgets and creating university councils with half their membership drawn from outside academia. Pis was recently alleged to have influenced the reinstatement of a professor who made homophobic remarks.
Some academics say it is too early to judge the reforms, which will not be fully implemented until 2022. Kulczycki, who advises the government and backs the reforms, said that they have increased university autonomy, that Polish academics remain free to study what they wish and that pursuit of LGBTQ studies has not been curtailed.
But Piotr Węgleński, former rector of the University of Warsaw, said fields such as history and law are at “risk of distortion” via funding flows and that the party had pressurised institutions and high-profile appointees.
The minister for science and higher education, Jarosław Gowin, has called for research funding to be made a priority but many academics are sceptical.
Economists think the economy is likely to slow, but Poland must still invest in research, said Kulczycki. “We need to support young academics,” he said.
The government was unable to comment at the time of going to press.
This article also appeared in Research Europe