Department of Legal Studies Mourns Wiktor Osiatyński, Distinguished Faculty Member, Constitutionalist and Human Rights Defender

Professor Wiktor Osiatyński, a long-time faculty member passed away at the age of 72 after a struggle with cancer.

Professor Osiatyński had taught in the Department of Legal Studies at CEU since 1995 and held the rank of University Professor at CEU. In the early years he taught courses on constitutionalism and transition to democracy in post-Communist Europe. More recently, he offered a course on the theory and practice of individual and human rights. He was keen on being involved with doctoral education; his annual lecture in the doctoral program was a much praised annual event. Between 2003 and 2013 he was the chair of the Marek Nowicki Memorial Lecture series. He was especially passionate about this initiative as it brought the most eminent human rights defenders from all around the world for twin lectures to CEU in Budapest and to the Polish Helsinki Foundation in Warsaw. He also took an interest in the teaching of public policy and was involved in many conversations about the opening of the new School of Public Policy at CEU.

Professor Osiatyński brought to the classroom his immense field experience, passion and wisdom. He held degrees in law and sociology from Warsaw University and the Polish Academy of Sciences. As a university student he participated in the protests of 1968 and became involved with constitutionalism and human rights at the start of the 1980s. He became an active participant of the many stages of Poland’s democratic constitutional transformation. Between 1990 and 1997 he was an advisor to a number of Constitutional Committees of the Polish Parliament. In 1992, he co-authored the draft of the Bill of Rights participated in the drafting of the 1997 Polish Constitution.

Till his last days Professor Osiatyński remained a committed participant of public debates on politics, constitutionalism and a wide range of human rights issues in Poland. He founded the Commission of Education on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction at the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw, which he chaired between 1988 and 1995. He was committed to raising awareness about alcoholism and addiction, offering his personal struggle as an example. Among other pursuits, he was an outspoken feminist. In 2006 he was among the four initiators of the establishment of the Women's Party; he was awarded the title of "Feminist of the Year" of the OŚK Foundation. His books "The Citizen's Republic" on the transformation from Communism (2004) and “Rehab” (2005) became the subject of national attention in Poland. He was awarded the Commander Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

In addition to being a most active and visible presence in Polish academia and the public discourse, Professor Osiatyński had a formidable international presence as an academic and as an activist. Between 1991 and 1997, Osiatyński was co-director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe at the Chicago Law School. Between 1991 and 2001, he was a recurrent visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Since 2002, Osiatyński had been involved in the development of a multi-disciplinary center for Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. He was a member of the board of the Open Society Foundations, a long-standing member of the Global Board, and previously served on the boards of the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Human Rights Initiative, among others.

The focus of Professor Osiatyński’s scholarly interests was the comparative study of constitutionalism and individual rights. He wrote 20 books in Polish, a majority of these about the comparative history of social and political thought and developed a number of standard university syllabi, among others on "Human Rights in Eastern Europe" and "Constitutionalism and Rights in Transition from Communism," "Rights, Responsibilities, and Commitments." He was a co-editor of the East European Constitutional Review. In 2009 he published Human Rights and Their Limits, a book on the theory and history of individual and human rights, with Cambridge University Press.

Professor Osiatyński is remembered by the CEU community for his unceasing fight against injustice; in his last moments he remained a spirited advocate standing up for CEU. In early April in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza he described CEU as a place where students from all over the world receive not only world-class, but also European education. He was among the first public intellectuals to call on the institutions and the leaders of the European Union to come to the defense of CEU.

The Department of Legal Studies, our colleagues, students and alumni are deeply saddened by the passing of a great teacher, a colleague and a friend. We hope to preserve not only his legacy, but also his spirit and passion. Following his mentors he taught us to use our wits, our education and our privileged position to stand up for our ideals at all times.