Przedmiotem analizy w niniejszym tekście są wybrane działania instytucjonalne i akcje społeczne, podejmowane w latach 2018-2020 w Polsce na uczelniach i poza nimi, mające na celu ustalenie, co i komu można mówić w ramach akademii oraz co może mówić uczony zabierający głos w debacie publicznej. Wybrane inicjatywy społeczne i ustawodawcze na gruncie polskim omówione zostają w szerszym kontekście: aktywności ruchów społecznych o wyraźnym obliczu ideowym (lewicowych i prawicowych), sprzeciwów wobec organizowania na uczelniach wykładów i debat o charakterze uznanym za „ideologiczny”, inicjatyw na rzecz wolności debaty na uczelniach.

Against „ideologies”. „Freedom” of science at stake in culture wars

The subject of the current article is the analysis of select institutional activities, including drafts of legislative initiatives and social actions, that took place during 2018-2020 at Polish universities (and outside of them), aiming at defining of what can be expressed, who is entitled to speak within the realm of academy – and what can be said by an academic teacher or scientist during public debate. These social actions and legislative initiatives are discussed in the broader context of activities of social movements having clear ideological face (either left- or rightwing), protests against lectures and debates organised at universities that were labelled as „ideological” ones, as well as projects intending to promote specific visions of academic freedom along with corresponding regulations for universities.

Artykuł analizuje przemiany w prywatnym szkolnictwie wyższym w Polsce i Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1990-2020. Po upadku komunizmu rozkwit prywatnego szkolnictwa był intensywny i gwałtowny. W Polsce prywatyzacja była szczególnie dynamiczna ze względu na wyż demograficzny, liczba studentów w ciągu pierwszych 15 lat wzrosła 5-krotnie. Artykuł ukazuje relacje między prywatnym i publicznym szkolnictwem wyższym. Od roku 2010 z przyczyn demograficznych zaczęła spadać liczba studentów i pojawiły się prognozy o upadku szkolnictwa prywatnego. Przewidywania te nie znajdują odzwierciedlenia wrzeczywistości, o czym świadczą dane empiryczne. Uczelnie prywatne bowiem odnalazły się w tej sytuacji.  

Privatization of Higher Education Reforms in Poland and in Central and Eastern Europe

This article deals with the transformation of the previously non-existent private higher edu-cation in Poland and Central-Eastern Europe from 1990 to 202o. In Poland, moreover, pri-vatization was particularly intense because of the increase in the country's population. The number of students increased fivefold in the first 15 years. The article describes the relation-ship between private and public higher education. From 2010 onwards, the number of stu-dents began to decline and predictions were made about the demise of private education. These predictions were incorrect. Private universities began, for example, to accept students from abroad and teach in English. Part-time students are now more likely to choose private universities than in the past. About io% ofthese universities have become tediary education institutions, whose students earn more after their studies than graduates of state universities.

Keywords: privatization, higher education, public and private universities, demographic growth, demographic decline, university, Central and Eastern Europe

While criticism of management and other authorities might sometimes count as virtuous, it is often taken as a disturbance of business operations. Some people even think that criticism reflects badly on managers, as it supposedly shows that they do not have sufficient control over their employees. As I see it, then, feedback or criticism is framed in a highly ambivalent way: Although criticism is often invited as an opportunity for improvement, it is mostly received as a cause of reputational damage. A straightforward illustration of this fact is the treatment of so-called whistle blowers who might be viewed either as martyrs exposing problems to be addressed or as traitors revealing failings or misconduct. Yet, given the moral and institutional stakes in improving a problematic situation, it is still surprising that a portrayal of criticism as a disturbance is so often successful. So how is it possible to obscure the obvious downsides of shunning criticism? Zooming in on the ambivalent values associated with criticism, I shall argue that administrative hierarchies and distributions of tasks often provide incentives to suppress criticism and, by extension, collective action rooted in criticism of authorities in academia.

This article analyzes strategies and practices among Swedish Humanities scholars in relation to the demands of “internationalization” and in a framework of academic capitalism. The article is based on 30 qualitative interviews with scholars in philosophy, Romance languages and history. There are signs of cognitive dissonance, with conflicting set of norms. Benefits for the academic CV, along with a discipline’s ideals, traditions and its perceived role in society are the main context in which internationalization is understood, implemented and contested, with individual variations in international practices as e.g. international mobility, networking or publication strategies.

The objective of this article is to critically and reflectively describe the idea of education for sustainable development (ESD) in the context of higher education. We tackle the possibilities of implementation some useful skills and competences in the process of students’ sociological training. Firstly, the concept of ESD is discussed and its framework is presented focusing on the social aspect of sustainable development. Then we introduce a link between sociological training and ESD, as well as the challenges faced by the academy, academic teachers and students. We evaluate the case of the field research (vocational) sociological training for students and discuss the findings in the context of ESD. We present how aspects of Participatory Action Research (PAR) can be used in teaching social competences useful from the perspective of young people. We focus on competences obtained by students – professional as well as interpersonal or even personal. With such competences students can further deepen their awareness of sustainability and inclusion, policy and decision making processes.

The subject of the following article are the basic concepts present in Carl Schmitt’s political theory: concepts of enemy and war. The concept of the enemy is defined in the first part of the work in the context of coexistence with the concept of friend as the fundamental opposite of the theory of politics. The next part of the essay defines the concept of war, and then describes the right to war (ius belli) as a special right of the state. The last part of this paper deals with the particular concept of enemy, the internal enemy.

Celem artykułu jest rekonstrukcja i porównanie odmiennych typów wizerunków osób niepełnosprawnych. Jeden to obraz postulowany w dyskursie publicznym elit symbolicznych. Drugi to obraz rzeczywisty naprawdę przedstawiany w przestrzeni medialnej. Po analizie tekstów artykułów opublikowanych w latach 2017/2018 w trzech tygodnikach opiniotwórczych, zbadano i odtworzono rzeczywisty obraz osób z niepełnosprawnościami. Zestawienie obu wizerunków wykazuje istnienie rozdźwięku pomiędzy postulatami a stanem rzeczywistym, opartego na obrazie stygmatu, wykluczenia, zubożenia, uzależnienia od pomocy, niższej pozycji społecznej. 

The Image of People with Disabilities: the Postulated State and the Real Image in the Media Recreated on the Example of Opinion-Forming Weeklies

Esej podejmuje kwestie ważne dla współczesnej demokracji. Z raportów instytucji monitorujących jej stan na świecie wyłania się obraz demokracji w recesji. Stanowi on globalne tło do „lokalnych” wyników badań i analiz zawartych w pracy badaczy, których książka stanowi główny przedmiot eseju. Rahat i Kenig badają dwa główne zjawiska współczesnej demokracji: zmierzch partii politycznych i personalizację polityki. Autorzy dokumentują wyraźne zjawisko personalizacji polityki i mniej wyraźny, bo przyjmujący dwie formy, trend zmian partyjnych (upadek bądź adaptacja). Oba zjawiska są paliwem polityki populistycznej. Groźne dla demokracji trendy opisane do roku 2015 nasiliły się później w postaci „wojen kulturowych”, stanowiących zdaniem innych badaczy ślepą uliczkę dla demokracji liberalnych.       

Democracy in a recession? Diagnosis and repair projects

The essay examines two of the most prominent developments in contemporary democratic politics, party change and political personalization, and the relationship between them. It presents a broad-brush, cross-national comparison of these phenomena that covers around fifty years in twenty-six countries through the use of more than twenty indicators. It demonstrates that, behind a general trend of decline of political parties, there is much variance among countries. In some, party decline is moderate or even small, which may point to adaptation to the changing environments these parties operate in. In others, parties sharply decline. Most cases fall between these two poles. A clear general trend of personalization in politics is identified, but there are large differences among countries in its magnitude and manifestations. Surprisingly, the online world seems to supply parties with an opportunity to revive. When parties decline, personalization increases. Yet these are far from being perfect zero-sum relationships, which leaves room for the possibility that other political actors may step in when parties decline and that, in some cases, personalization may not hurt parties; it may even strengthen them. Personalization is a big challenge to parties. But parties were, are, and will remain a solution to the problem of collective action, of channeling personal energies to the benefit of the group. Thus they can cope with personalization and even use it to their advantage.

Keywords: collective action, cross-national comparison, party adaptation, party change, party decline, political parties, political personalization

Saffronisation, a neologism that is derived from the saffron robes worn in particular by holy Hindu men, is used to denote the conflation of linguistic, semiotic and political actions taken by the far-right Hindu nationalist brotherhood in India to mechanically alter Indian history so that it resonates with the rest of the Hindu nationalist propaganda and policymaking. The process of Saffronisation, when coupled with westernised pedagogical curricula, has been inculcated within and beyond the periphery of educational institutions since the early twentieth century. While education in India has remained a concentrated resource in the hands of the communities that constitute the upper castes within the social hierarchy, the exclusivity of available academic resources and intellectual capital in the hands of a selected few has come off as the result of intersectional crises that collectively act as a bridge in connecting class and caste politics. This paper explores the impact of Saffronisation as a socio-political movement on educational institutions, the changes that have been made in textbooks in the recent times and in a holistic sense, attempts to analyse the effects of a neo-Fascist governance on schooling and how it affects students hailing from backgrounds that have been marginalised for generations. It is also an exploration of the role of the saffron propaganda in enabling otherisation of non-Hindu identities in higher education institutions.

Przedmiotem artykułu jest przegląd piśmiennictwa poświęconego tematyce wirtualnej autoprezentacji oraz próba określenia najczęściej stosowanych strategii i taktyk autoprezentacyjnych na portalu Sympatia.pl. Kolejne cele pracy polegają na sprawdzeniu, jak płeć użytkownika wpływa na kształtowanie jego wirtualnego wizerunku za pomocą językowych środków wyrazu.  Na potrzebę badania przeanalizowano 200 opisów (100 profili mężczyzn, 100 profili kobiet), zaprezentowane wyniki pokazują dominujące postawy autoprezentacyjne oraz aktualne tendencje w wyborze sposobu autoprezentacji pod względem płci.

Phenomenon of social dating: strategies of self-presentation

In recent years, the use of online dating platforms has evolved from a marginal to a widespread social practice. The online dating arena provides an opportunity to investigate changing cultural norms concerning technology-mediated relationship formation and to shed light on such aspects of online behavior as the impression formation process and self-presentation strategies. A field experiment was focused on self-presentation strategies and tactics among online dating participants, investigating how participants' sex effects on managing their online presentation of self in order to accomplish the goal of enhancing their level of attractiveness. After conducting a pilot study, was collected 200 text-based profiles (100 women, 100 men) from the online dating service “Sympatia.pl” and examined through them with respect to strategies type.

Keywords: online dating, sex differences, personal advertisements, impression management, sexual strategies theory, mate preferences.

The article provides a brief historical background of Polish-Lithuanian stereotypes and provides the results of sociological research, which was carried out at the Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. The main tasks of the article are to examine Polish and Lithuanian characters, their mutual relations and relations to other people, their attitudes to material goods and to their homeland. The author tried to define "How Lithuanians refer to themselves and to Poles". The results of the research are divided into two parts. The first describes Lithuanian autostereotypes and stereotypes about Lithuanians. The second part provides data about actual Lithuanian stereotypes about Poles. As a result of the research, we confirmed most of the "classical stereotypes" about the two nations, but also found the new ones.

We, as humans appropriated science. A scientist is associated only with a human being. It doesn't have to stay that way. Non-protein scientists may appear sooner than expected. We will be challenged soon. A new legal and ethical code will be needed, and above all, a redefinition of the concepts of science and scientist seems to be urgent to formulate. The appearance of superintelligence and machines in science will mean the need to re-evaluate its operation. Let's start noticing the law of artificial intelligence (AI), to build inclusive science with machines.

Przedmiotem analizy w niniejszym tekście są wybrane działania instytucjonalne i akcje społeczne, podejmowane w latach 2018-2020 w Polsce na uczelniach i poza nimi, mające na celu ustalenie, co i komu można mówić w ramach akademii oraz co może mówić uczony zabierający głos w debacie publicznej. Wybrane inicjatywy społeczne i ustawodawcze na gruncie polskim omówione zostają w szerszym kontekście: aktywności ruchów społecznych o wyraźnym obliczu ideowym (lewicowych i prawicowych), sprzeciwów wobec organizowania na uczelniach wykładów i debat o charakterze uznanym za „ideologiczny”, inicjatyw na rzecz wolności debaty na uczelniach.

Against „ideologies”. „Freedom” of science at stake in culture wars

The subject of the current article is the analysis of select institutional activities, including drafts of legislative initiatives and social actions, that took place during 2018-2020 at Polish universities (and outside of them), aiming at defining of what can be expressed, who is entitled to speak within the realm of academy – and what can be said by an academic teacher or scientist during public debate. These social actions and legislative initiatives are discussed in the broader context of activities of social movements having clear ideological face (either left- or rightwing), protests against lectures and debates organised at universities that were labelled as „ideological” ones, as well as projects intending to promote specific visions of academic freedom along with corresponding regulations for universities.

Artykuł analizuje przemiany w prywatnym szkolnictwie wyższym w Polsce i Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1990-2020. Po upadku komunizmu rozkwit prywatnego szkolnictwa był intensywny i gwałtowny. W Polsce prywatyzacja była szczególnie dynamiczna ze względu na wyż demograficzny, liczba studentów w ciągu pierwszych 15 lat wzrosła 5-krotnie. Artykuł ukazuje relacje między prywatnym i publicznym szkolnictwem wyższym. Od roku 2010 z przyczyn demograficznych zaczęła spadać liczba studentów i pojawiły się prognozy o upadku szkolnictwa prywatnego. Przewidywania te nie znajdują odzwierciedlenia wrzeczywistości, o czym świadczą dane empiryczne. Uczelnie prywatne bowiem odnalazły się w tej sytuacji.  

Privatization of Higher Education Reforms in Poland and in Central and Eastern Europe

This article deals with the transformation of the previously non-existent private higher edu-cation in Poland and Central-Eastern Europe from 1990 to 202o. In Poland, moreover, pri-vatization was particularly intense because of the increase in the country's population. The number of students increased fivefold in the first 15 years. The article describes the relation-ship between private and public higher education. From 2010 onwards, the number of stu-dents began to decline and predictions were made about the demise of private education. These predictions were incorrect. Private universities began, for example, to accept students from abroad and teach in English. Part-time students are now more likely to choose private universities than in the past. About io% ofthese universities have become tediary education institutions, whose students earn more after their studies than graduates of state universities.

Keywords: privatization, higher education, public and private universities, demographic growth, demographic decline, university, Central and Eastern Europe

While criticism of management and other authorities might sometimes count as virtuous, it is often taken as a disturbance of business operations. Some people even think that criticism reflects badly on managers, as it supposedly shows that they do not have sufficient control over their employees. As I see it, then, feedback or criticism is framed in a highly ambivalent way: Although criticism is often invited as an opportunity for improvement, it is mostly received as a cause of reputational damage. A straightforward illustration of this fact is the treatment of so-called whistle blowers who might be viewed either as martyrs exposing problems to be addressed or as traitors revealing failings or misconduct. Yet, given the moral and institutional stakes in improving a problematic situation, it is still surprising that a portrayal of criticism as a disturbance is so often successful. So how is it possible to obscure the obvious downsides of shunning criticism? Zooming in on the ambivalent values associated with criticism, I shall argue that administrative hierarchies and distributions of tasks often provide incentives to suppress criticism and, by extension, collective action rooted in criticism of authorities in academia.

This article analyzes strategies and practices among Swedish Humanities scholars in relation to the demands of “internationalization” and in a framework of academic capitalism. The article is based on 30 qualitative interviews with scholars in philosophy, Romance languages and history. There are signs of cognitive dissonance, with conflicting set of norms. Benefits for the academic CV, along with a discipline’s ideals, traditions and its perceived role in society are the main context in which internationalization is understood, implemented and contested, with individual variations in international practices as e.g. international mobility, networking or publication strategies.

Saffronisation, a neologism that is derived from the saffron robes worn in particular by holy Hindu men, is used to denote the conflation of linguistic, semiotic and political actions taken by the far-right Hindu nationalist brotherhood in India to mechanically alter Indian history so that it resonates with the rest of the Hindu nationalist propaganda and policymaking. The process of Saffronisation, when coupled with westernised pedagogical curricula, has been inculcated within and beyond the periphery of educational institutions since the early twentieth century. While education in India has remained a concentrated resource in the hands of the communities that constitute the upper castes within the social hierarchy, the exclusivity of available academic resources and intellectual capital in the hands of a selected few has come off as the result of intersectional crises that collectively act as a bridge in connecting class and caste politics. This paper explores the impact of Saffronisation as a socio-political movement on educational institutions, the changes that have been made in textbooks in the recent times and in a holistic sense, attempts to analyse the effects of a neo-Fascist governance on schooling and how it affects students hailing from backgrounds that have been marginalised for generations. It is also an exploration of the role of the saffron propaganda in enabling otherisation of non-Hindu identities in higher education institutions.

We, as humans appropriated science. A scientist is associated only with a human being. It doesn't have to stay that way. Non-protein scientists may appear sooner than expected. We will be challenged soon. A new legal and ethical code will be needed, and above all, a redefinition of the concepts of science and scientist seems to be urgent to formulate. The appearance of superintelligence and machines in science will mean the need to re-evaluate its operation. Let's start noticing the law of artificial intelligence (AI), to build inclusive science with machines.

The objective of this article is to critically and reflectively describe the idea of education for sustainable development (ESD) in the context of higher education. We tackle the possibilities of implementation some useful skills and competences in the process of students’ sociological training. Firstly, the concept of ESD is discussed and its framework is presented focusing on the social aspect of sustainable development. Then we introduce a link between sociological training and ESD, as well as the challenges faced by the academy, academic teachers and students. We evaluate the case of the field research (vocational) sociological training for students and discuss the findings in the context of ESD. We present how aspects of Participatory Action Research (PAR) can be used in teaching social competences useful from the perspective of young people. We focus on competences obtained by students – professional as well as interpersonal or even personal. With such competences students can further deepen their awareness of sustainability and inclusion, policy and decision making processes.

The article provides a brief historical background of Polish-Lithuanian stereotypes and provides the results of sociological research, which was carried out at the Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. The main tasks of the article are to examine Polish and Lithuanian characters, their mutual relations and relations to other people, their attitudes to material goods and to their homeland. The author tried to define "How Lithuanians refer to themselves and to Poles". The results of the research are divided into two parts. The first describes Lithuanian autostereotypes and stereotypes about Lithuanians. The second part provides data about actual Lithuanian stereotypes about Poles. As a result of the research, we confirmed most of the "classical stereotypes" about the two nations, but also found the new ones.

The subject of the following article are the basic concepts present in Carl Schmitt’s political theory: concepts of enemy and war. The concept of the enemy is defined in the first part of the work in the context of coexistence with the concept of friend as the fundamental opposite of the theory of politics. The next part of the essay defines the concept of war, and then describes the right to war (ius belli) as a special right of the state. The last part of this paper deals with the particular concept of enemy, the internal enemy.

Celem artykułu jest rekonstrukcja i porównanie odmiennych typów wizerunków osób niepełnosprawnych. Jeden to obraz postulowany w dyskursie publicznym elit symbolicznych. Drugi to obraz rzeczywisty naprawdę przedstawiany w przestrzeni medialnej. Po analizie tekstów artykułów opublikowanych w latach 2017/2018 w trzech tygodnikach opiniotwórczych, zbadano i odtworzono rzeczywisty obraz osób z niepełnosprawnościami. Zestawienie obu wizerunków wykazuje istnienie rozdźwięku pomiędzy postulatami a stanem rzeczywistym, opartego na obrazie stygmatu, wykluczenia, zubożenia, uzależnienia od pomocy, niższej pozycji społecznej. 

The Image of People with Disabilities: the Postulated State and the Real Image in the Media Recreated on the Example of Opinion-Forming Weeklies

Przedmiotem artykułu jest przegląd piśmiennictwa poświęconego tematyce wirtualnej autoprezentacji oraz próba określenia najczęściej stosowanych strategii i taktyk autoprezentacyjnych na portalu Sympatia.pl. Kolejne cele pracy polegają na sprawdzeniu, jak płeć użytkownika wpływa na kształtowanie jego wirtualnego wizerunku za pomocą językowych środków wyrazu.  Na potrzebę badania przeanalizowano 200 opisów (100 profili mężczyzn, 100 profili kobiet), zaprezentowane wyniki pokazują dominujące postawy autoprezentacyjne oraz aktualne tendencje w wyborze sposobu autoprezentacji pod względem płci.

Phenomenon of social dating: strategies of self-presentation

In recent years, the use of online dating platforms has evolved from a marginal to a widespread social practice. The online dating arena provides an opportunity to investigate changing cultural norms concerning technology-mediated relationship formation and to shed light on such aspects of online behavior as the impression formation process and self-presentation strategies. A field experiment was focused on self-presentation strategies and tactics among online dating participants, investigating how participants' sex effects on managing their online presentation of self in order to accomplish the goal of enhancing their level of attractiveness. After conducting a pilot study, was collected 200 text-based profiles (100 women, 100 men) from the online dating service “Sympatia.pl” and examined through them with respect to strategies type.

Keywords: online dating, sex differences, personal advertisements, impression management, sexual strategies theory, mate preferences.

Esej podejmuje kwestie ważne dla współczesnej demokracji. Z raportów instytucji monitorujących jej stan na świecie wyłania się obraz demokracji w recesji. Stanowi on globalne tło do „lokalnych” wyników badań i analiz zawartych w pracy badaczy, których książka stanowi główny przedmiot eseju. Rahat i Kenig badają dwa główne zjawiska współczesnej demokracji: zmierzch partii politycznych i personalizację polityki. Autorzy dokumentują wyraźne zjawisko personalizacji polityki i mniej wyraźny, bo przyjmujący dwie formy, trend zmian partyjnych (upadek bądź adaptacja). Oba zjawiska są paliwem polityki populistycznej. Groźne dla demokracji trendy opisane do roku 2015 nasiliły się później w postaci „wojen kulturowych”, stanowiących zdaniem innych badaczy ślepą uliczkę dla demokracji liberalnych.       

Democracy in a recession? Diagnosis and repair projects

The essay examines two of the most prominent developments in contemporary democratic politics, party change and political personalization, and the relationship between them. It presents a broad-brush, cross-national comparison of these phenomena that covers around fifty years in twenty-six countries through the use of more than twenty indicators. It demonstrates that, behind a general trend of decline of political parties, there is much variance among countries. In some, party decline is moderate or even small, which may point to adaptation to the changing environments these parties operate in. In others, parties sharply decline. Most cases fall between these two poles. A clear general trend of personalization in politics is identified, but there are large differences among countries in its magnitude and manifestations. Surprisingly, the online world seems to supply parties with an opportunity to revive. When parties decline, personalization increases. Yet these are far from being perfect zero-sum relationships, which leaves room for the possibility that other political actors may step in when parties decline and that, in some cases, personalization may not hurt parties; it may even strengthen them. Personalization is a big challenge to parties. But parties were, are, and will remain a solution to the problem of collective action, of channeling personal energies to the benefit of the group. Thus they can cope with personalization and even use it to their advantage.

Keywords: collective action, cross-national comparison, party adaptation, party change, party decline, political parties, political personalization