To the Rector of the Jagiellonian University:

We, a group of scholars from different countries, have learned that your university and Philosophy Department have seen fit to reprimand Professor Ryszard Legutko for an “Open Letter,” in which he urges your institution to “disband” the office of equal treatment. Since you did not respond to Professor Legutko’s letter, we infer that the Philosophy Department’s position represents your opinion as well. Of more than thirty faculty members, only one stood by Legutko, and one abstained from voting. This forces us to conclude that Professor Legutko was right in calling to your attention the growing ideologization of your university. Uniformity of thinking is not an indication of healthy intellectual life but in today’s academic environment has become a sure sign of the opposite.

Although we do not know all the details of this daring experiment, considering how such offices function in America and elsewhere, Professor Legutko is entirely correct to resist it. Political Correctness, a theme that many of us have addressed in multiple books and articles, is a dangerous totalitarian concept; and it is one that has sowed havoc and disunity in every Western onetime democracy. The result of this venture inflicted on us by public administrators, the media and the educational establishment has been to render our countries less free and more open to ideological manipulation.

Professor Legutko is an eminent scholar in political theory, from whose study on the pitfalls of our religion of democracy we in the Western countries have learned a great deal. His grim warnings about the antiliberal potential of modern democracy (and here we are using ‘liberal’ in its true nineteenth-century sense) are clearly on the mark; and what the good professor is now undergoing at your venerable institution witnesses to the truth of his predictions.

In the name of an elusive goal of total equality, including special rights for designated victims, Western civilization is destroying itself. We were hoping that Poland and other relatively traditional Western countries would be spared this fate that is now overwhelming the United States, the Anglosphere, and parts of Europe. Perhaps we were overly optimistic.

Paul Gottfried,
Editor, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,
Author of After Liberalism,
Zbigniew Janowski,
Author of Homo Americanus: The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy in America

Signatories To The Letter:

Francesco Andriani, President of Ideare (Italy)

Jacek Bartyzel, University of Nicholas Copernicus, UMK (Poland)

Luigi Marco Bassani, University of Milan (Italy)

Clifford Angell Bates, Warsaw University (Poland)

José Carlos Bermejo Barrera, University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

Jeremy Black, The University of Exeter (England)

Katarzyna Błachowska, Warsaw University (Poland)

Aleksander Bobko, Uniwersytet Rzeszowski (Poland)

Catharine Savage Brosman, Tulane University (USA)

Chris Buskirk, Editor, American Greatness (USA)

Nicholas Capaldi, Loyola University, New Orleans (USA)

Jonathan C.D. Clark, historian (England)

Lee Congdon, James Madison University (USA)

Wayne Cristaudo, Charles Darwin University (Australia)

Felipe Cuello, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (Dominican Republic)

Magdalena Danielewiczowa, Warsaw University (Poland)

Nirmal Dass, Editor, The Postil Magazine (Canada)

Zuzanna Dawidowicz, Editor, Arcana (Poland)

Marshall De Rosa, Florida Atlantic University (USA)

Marion Duvauchel, Historian of Religions (France)

Filip Doroszewski, Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego (Poland)

Ian Dowbiggin, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada
University of Prince Edward Island
(Canada)

Jacob Duggan, student at Towson University, Baltimore (USA)

Serafín Fanjul, Catedrático de la UNAM, Miember, Real Academia de la Historia (Spain)

Richard Fafara, Adler-Aquinas Institute (USA).

Devin Foley, CEO of the Charlemagne Institute (USA)

Bruce Gilley, Portland State University (USA)

Catherine Godfrey-Howell, JCD, St. Augustine’s Press (USA)

David Gordon, Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (USA)

Jean-Louis Harouel, University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) (France)

Ann Hartle, Emory University (USA)

Grant Havers, Trinity Western University (Canada)

Domingo González Hernández, University of Murcia, Spain

Jozefa Hrynkiewicz, Warsaw University (Poland)

Arnaud Imatz, Political Scientist and Historian (France)

Elżbieta Janus, UKSW (Poland)

Dariusz Karłowicz, Editor-in-chief, Teologia Polityczna (Poland)

Tomasz Kaźmierowski, Founder of Fundacja Identitas (Poland)

Robert M. P. W. Graham Kerr, Inarah, Institute for Research on Early Islamic History and the Koran, Saarbrücken (Germany)

Roger Kimball, Editor of New Criterion, and director of Encounter Books (USA)

Harrison Koehli, host of MindMatters (USA)

Adam Korytowski, AGH (Poland)

Maria Korytowska, Jagiellonian University (Poland)

Thaddeus Kozinski, Divine Mercy University (USA)

Wojciech Kruszewski, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski (Poland)

Maria Kunicka, XIII Liceum Aleksandra Fredry (Poland)

Wojciejch Kunicki, Wroclaw University (Poland)

Antoni Libera, writer, author of Madame (Poland)

Donald W. Livingston, Emory University (USA)

Sean McMeekin, Bard College (USA)

Justyna Melonowaska, Maria Grzegorzewska University (Poland)

Andrzej Nowak, Jagiellonian University (Poland)

Piotr Nowak, Bialystok University (Poland)

José Luis Orella, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid (Spain)

Michał Otorowski, Fundacja Augusta hr Cieszkowskiego (Poland)

Ciro Paoletti, Director of Associazione di Studi Storici e Militari (Italy)

Robert Paquette, President, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (USA)

Stanley Payne, Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison (USA)

Olga Płaszczewska, Jagiellonian University (Poland)

Peter Redpath, CEO, Aquinas School of Leadership and Commonsense Wisdom Academies (USA)

Alexander Riley, Professor of Sociology, Bucknell University (USA)

Robert Reilly, Former Director of The Voice of America, Senior Fellow of the American Foreign Policy Council (USA)

Rusty Reno, Editor-in-Chief, FIRST THINGS

Jan Rokita, Ignatianum (Poland)

Magdalena Saganiak, Humanities Department, UKSW, Warsaw (Poland)

Andrzej Wasko, Jagiellonian University (Poland)

Anna Wasko, Editor, Arcana, and professor at Jagiellonian University (Poland)

Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois—Urbana (USA)

Edward Welsch, Executive Editor, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture (USA)

Bronisław Wildstein, writer (Poland)

Maria Anna Zając, Uniwersytet Śląski (Poland)

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