A year has passed since the death of Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński. A Professor, our Friend and a Master.
It is said that after such a loss only time can heal all wounds. This is only fractionally true because we miss him more and more, especially with all that is going on around us: globalization, European integration and other more localized processes in our state, nation and society. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński did not give us ready-made solutions because he was not, and did not want to be, either a clairvoyant or a miraculous healer of our minds. But his intellectual strength lay precisely in the fact that he could ask intriguing questions and mobilize us to seek answers. And his approach was not just about finding the correct answers or the best argument, but hypotheses, possible variants of social development, the search for mechanisms of power as well as the causes and essence of social and political processes. It was also about seeking things that are deep beneath the surface of what we see, comment and analyse every day.
One of the originators and the founders of Collegium Civitas, he was its first President, then Rector and later Honorary Rector of our university. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński was also an excellent university lecturer and a scientific authority for us all including his undergraduates, postgraduates, doctoral students, professors and colleagues from the fields of sociology and political science. Our university’s motto “Gradu diverso, via una”— “The same way, by different steps”—not only accurately describes the profile of Collegium Civitas, but constituted a life-long principle that Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski adhered to.
Dear Professor, Dear Edmund,
Your friends and colleagues are thinking of you…
Professor Stanisław Mocek
Rector of Collegium Civitas on behalf of the entire university community
Obituaries of Prof. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński (in Polish):
http://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/kraj/1604523,1,nie-zyje-profesor-edmund-wnuk-lipinski.read
http://zielonka.blog.polityka.pl/2015/01/06/dwoch-wielkich-z-pomorza/