Conservative group launches university in Poland to “forge elites for the entire region”

A new university is being launched in Poland with ties to an ultraconservative organisation and the participation of two Polish government ministers and one from Hungary. Its aim is to “forge elites for the entire region” of Central and Eastern Europe and provide a space for debate without “ideological censorship”.

Collegium Intermarium (the name of which refers to the area between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas) is closely linked to Ordo Iuris, a legal body that has led influential campaigns against abortion, sex education and “LGBT ideology”. Its inauguration later this month will be attended by the education and culture ministers.

“Collegium Intermarium was created in response to the crisis of academic life” and the “restricted sphere of free academic debate,” claims the university on its website.

Conservatives have long claimed that they are discriminated against at Polish universities, despite Poland having a number of prominent conservative academics. The current education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, has pledged to end the “dictatorship of left-liberal views” that “dominates higher education”.

According to its mission statement, Collegium Intermarium “will be founded on the values of Western civilisation”. It pledges “to actively defend students and teachers from aggressive attacks restricting academic debate and any attempts to ideologically censor or intimidate the academic community”.

The institution’s rector, Tymoteusz Zych, and the chair of its board of trustees, Jerzy Kwaśniewski, are the deputy president and president respectively of Ordo Iuris.

Ordo Iuris has in recent years played a leading role in campaigns to restrict access to abortion (with a near-total ban being introduced last year), to bring criminal cases under Poland’s blasphemy laws, and to withdraw Poland from a European convention on preventing violence against women.

Collegium Intermarium will offer graduate and postgraduate studies (in Polish and English) starting in October this year, with courses in Law, International Human Rights Law, Family Policy in Local Government, and Management in NGOs.

“The university will become a forge of elites for the entire Intermarium region,” says the institution. It wants to prepare students for “undertaking responsible social roles and leading positions in the world of law, business, research, politics, and media”.

Among the lecturers announced as teaching at the new university are Ligia Castaldi from Ave Maria School of Law, who specialises in prenatal rights in international law, and Robert Oscar Lopez, an American legal scholar who has opposed same-sex marriage.

A conference to inaugurate Collegium Intermarium will take place on 28 May, with Czarnek in attendance as well as Piotr Gliński, the culture minister. Andrzej Zybertowicz, an academic and advisor to President Andrzej Duda, is also due to attend.

Earlier this year, Czarnek also launched a new state-funded centre that aims to research and counter what he says is the growth of “Christianophobia” in Europe. Hundreds of Polish and international scholars have called for boycotts of Czarnek over his “homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic views”.

Collegium Intermarium has also announced that among the international visitors at its inauguration will be Václav Klaus, the former president and prime minister of the Czech Republic, Judit Varga, the Hungarian justice minister, and Caroline Cox, a member of the British House of Lords known for her criticism of Islam.

The official founder of the university is a foundation, Fundacja Edukacja do Wartości, which was established last year and whose board consists solely of Zych and Kwaśniewski, notes Noizz, a news website.

Ordo Iuris itself has been the subject of much controversy in Poland. VSquare, an investigative journalism group, describes it as part of an “international network of ultra-conservative organisations” aiming to “eradicate liberal values, tighten the law, change the language of the debate, fill key positions and build political influence”.

It is alleged to have ties with Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), a Brazil-based international movement of Traditional Catholicism. Zych, however, recently told Emerging Europe that “Ordo Iuris is not ‘inspired’ by the TFP movement, [and] neither it is part of it”.

Ordo Iuris has grown in influence under the current conservative government. Its “Charter of Family Rights” has been adopted by many local authorities and its founder, Aleksander Stępkowski, served as a deputy minister before being appointed a Supreme Court judge in 2019.

Main image credit: Collegium Intermarium/Twitter

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna