Race, Human Rights, and Populism in Poland: A Symposium
From Sydney Lazarus
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From Sydney Lazarus
This symposium brings together a set of cross-disciplinary experts prepared to explore this contradiction in Poland as an erstwhile would-be vanguard of liberal democracy and now fulcrum for an illiberal turn. A Poland that is out on the streets, fighting both for women's and LGBT rights and against antisemitism and xenophobia, is still visible. The tradition is not new. Yet the prevailing sense of the arc of Polish history in the past century is that this kind of Poland keeps losing against a different one. For those invested in the contemporary liberal face of Poland, what traditions and new creative demonstrations of civil society offer hope? For those who are more interested in understanding the more conservative turn in Polish identity, an identity that has been visible through the post-Communist period, what is important to understand about the wishes and grievances of those currently pushing back on the wider embrace of EU values by the previous Polish political leadership?