Sept. 17, 1998
Contact: Shirley De Vault
(804) 924-7236
	
LECH WALESA TO INAUGURATE CHAIR IN POLISH STUDIES
AT U.VA.ŐS MILLER CENTER OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

	Lech Walesa, former president of the Republic of Poland, will
speak in ceremonies to inaugurate the Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies
on Oct. 16 at 5:30 p.m. at the University of Virginia's White Burkett
Miller Center of Public Affairs.
	Jerzy Kozminski, PolandŐs ambassador to the United States,
will accompany him and present a forum on the future of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization on Oct. 17 at 2 p.m. Both events will be
held in the centerŐs J. Wilson Newman Pavilion, and are free and open
to the public.
	Walesa, president of Poland from 1990 to 1995, was an
electrician in the Gdansk Lenin shipyards and was active in union
organizing for several years before capturing the worldŐs attention
as head of the 10 million-member Solidarity labor movement. Despite the
crackdown of martial law and his repeated imprisonment, Walesa's bold
efforts led to the end of Communist rule in Poland and Eastern Europe.  
	Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. Now retired from
politics, he heads the Lech Walesa Institute, whose aim is to champion
democracy and free market reform in Eastern Europe and throughout the
developing world.
	The Kosciuszko Professorship in Polish Studies is named for
Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746 1817), a Polish patriot and friend of the
American Revolution and Thomas Jefferson. The chair's primary supporter
is Blanka Rosenstiel, an Albemarle County resident and executive
secretary for the American Institute of Polish Culture. The Miller
Center will administer a permanent fund to create an endowed chair at
the center for an eminent scholar, for the purpose of assuring that
scholarship and teaching in the field of Poland's history, government,
and economy becomes emphasized among the University's offerings. The
chair is as yet unfilled.
	The Miller Center of Public Affairs, located at 2201 Old Ivy
Road in Charlottesville, is a nonpartisan research institute which
supports scholarship on the national and international policies of the
United States, past, present, and future. Miller Center research
emphasizes both the substance and process of national policymaking. 
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