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Week of 23 October 1998 Vol. II, No. 11 Feature Article Institutions of civil society Peripatetic philosophy prof honored for commitment to free flow of ideas By Eric McHenry Krzysztof Michalski moves comfortably between different nations, different languages, and different professional roles. He holds philosophy professorships at both BU and the University of Warsaw, and is founding director of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Institute for Human Sciences) in Vienna, where he also edits a journal of intellectual discourse entitled, appropriately, Transit. Ideas, he believes, should move just as freely as he does. For that belief he was recently honored with a European Human Sciences Award, one of several prestigious European Cultural Prizes conferred annually. The awards are sponsored by an association of European industrialists under the auspices of the European Council. Each one recognizes a different contribution to scholarship, the humanities, or arts and letters in Europe. French Senator Louis Jung, honorary president of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, presented Michalski with the prize, worth 10,000 deutsche marks (about $6,100), at a special ceremony in Cracow, Poland, on Saturday, October 10. It was an affirmation of a lifetime of service to the human sciences, embodied most notably in the Institute, which Michalski and other young European scholars established in 1982. As Eastern Europe entered the final years of Soviet influence, the Institute was a unique venue for free interchange between Eastern Bloc and Western thinkers. And it has been a stable presence during the region's recent period of political and intellectual transition. Krzysztof Michalski, CAS professor of philosophy, was recently honored with a European Human Sciences Award for his work as an educator and proponent of free intellectual interchange. Photo by Vernon Doucette "In 1982, there simply weren't any institutions of this kind," says Michalski. "It's an institute for advanced study, a research center, and we wanted it to be open to people and ideas from East Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Empire. We wanted to change the Western discussion through introduction of these ideas and these people." From the outset, Michalski and his colleagues took measures to make the Institute a safe haven for scholars. Their research and publications, he felt, needed to be free from the threat of coercion or suppression. Although some Western states have from time to time provided funding for the Institute, it is not politically or governmentally affiliated. And it is located in a neutral city. "Of course, at the beginning it was difficult for people from the Eastern parts of Europe to come to the Institute," says Michalski, "because they were coming from totalitarian states. "Now," he says, "there are no longer political obstacles; everybody can travel. But there are still obstacles in our minds. We're dealing with a cut-off part of the Western world, which has to be reintegrated intellectually. When that's been accomplished, the rest of the Western world will not look the same. We want to be an instrument of incorporation, to ease that return." The In