Lech Walesa to lecture and visit classes as Montgomery Fellow

Posted 04/20/01

Former president of Poland and Solidarity movement leader Lech Walesa will be the spring term's first Montgomery Fellow this month, with a public address scheduled for 4 p.m., Monday, April 23, in Spaulding Auditorium. Walesa also will meet with students in classes and other, informal venues during his visit.

A former electrician who came to international attention in the late 1970s and 1980s for his leadership of the Polish labor movement, Walesa was instrumental in the August 1980 Gdansk shipyard strike. The demonstration eventually resulted in workers gaining the right to strike and to organize independent unions in Communist-controlled Poland. His activism made him the subject of Communist surveillance for much of the 1980s, and he was repeatedly jailed.

In 1983 Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Fearing the Polish government would not allow him to return if he left the country, he had his wife accept the prize for him.

The continued pressure by the Solidarity movement on the Polish government finally precipitated parliamentary elections that led to the establishment of a non-Communist government. Walesa became the country's first democratically elected president in 1990. Defeated in his 1995 re-election bid, he now heads the Lech Walesa Institute, which aims to advance the ideals of democracy and free market reform throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the world.

For more information about the Montgomery Endowment or Walesa's visit, contact the Provost's Office at 646-4062.