Professor Karolina Jaklewicz from the Faculty of Architecture is the Rector's new Plenipotentiary for Anti-Discrimination. She is also an artist and curator of exhibitions, who has recently written her first book entitled "Jaśmina Berezy".

Ula Małecka: Do we even need a person like the Rector's Plenipotentiary for Anti-Discrimination at the university?

Prof. Karolina Jaklewicz: I believe that every European university, and even individual faculties, should appoint people to similar positions. Especially today, when we’re condemned to divisions. We’re being made to believe that we are at culture war. This is, of course, primitivising our dialogue and our co-presence.

I don’t agree with this way to define the state of affairs, nor do I agree to take part in this war. When we’re at war, we become enemies. We want to fight back instead of communicating. Someone wants to be stronger and impose their will, their point of view, or their outlook on the world. We, therefore, have great opportunities here to develop a community based on understanding, on the conviction that we must all fit into that community with a sense of security.

What kind of discrimination are we currently facing most often at the university?

The former Plenipotentiary, Stefan Giżewski, PhD, told me that until now we have most often come across discrimination between students and lecturers, or doctoral students and their supervisors, but there have also been tensions among students themselves.  

My conversations with the students’ self-governing union of the Faculty of Architecture revealed discrimination against students through malicious remarks made in public or unequal treatment of people with disabilities or another skin colour. They also saw issues of LGBT+ people and problems related to their relations with lecturers. It turns out that LGBT+ people don’t always feel safe. They don’t always know where they can report violations or issues that concern them.

Women may also be one of the groups facing discrimination at our university. A technical university is associated with a masculine environment. Meanwhile, we’re a place where we design the future. It’s worthwhile for certain solutions to come from the widest possible spectrum of personalities and experiences – including those of women.

When does discrimination between a student - lecturer or doctoral student occur? There’s a very thin line here between motivating somebody for hard work and discriminating them? When, according to students, is this line crossed?

When they feel that they’re being treated unfairly because of, for example, their background, disability, or simply the fact that they are in a weaker position. Anti-discrimination issues are not yet formally regulated in the university system, but I, along with my team, plan to develop solutions to support this area.

On taking up my position, I perused the preamble to the statute of Wrocław University of Science and Technology. It clearly states that we will build our standards on equality, tolerance, openness, and intellectual freedom. These shouldn’t just be noble words, but an everyday practice. I’d like us to be a community where there’s room for diversity and where there’s no room for divisions that generate hostility. Divisions that are now being attempted to strengthen in us and escalate. Divisions are a trap.

The academic environment, including our own, should be an example of dialogue. An example that diversity is a value and that this diversity doesn’t mean a stranger but all of us.  We’re different, we are diverse, and that is our strength.

Isn’t such a representative – in the current realities, characterised by considerable divisions – a political position? Such a person should bury those divisions and antagonisms which have become our reality in everyday life. The university – for obvious reasons – operates in this reality.

If it’s a political position, that is good, because it’s politics that changes reality. Politics isn’t something separate. It’s part of our lives. We shouldn’t make it peripheral. We shouldn’t think it doesn’t concern us. It does concern us, very much so. Much more than we imagine. I’ve seen this as an artist and curator, also as a writer, a novelist, or as a person who has always been socially involved.

I trust that Wrocław University of Science and Technology community is a group of wise and well-educated people. They’re open to otherness. We’re a community which has the knowledge, relations with scientists from all over the world, and contact with many cultures.

This is a challenge for us. I believe we’ll face up to it. I believe we can not only work together but also ensure the quality of this cooperation. I believe we can act beyond divisions and draw on the simplest values, such as the voice of the heart or plain human decency.

We must set these standards. We must not afraid to do it.

More and more LGBT+ free zones are emerging in Poland, so we already have a kind of war between those who don’t want LGBT+ where they live and those for whom the LGBT+ community is an element of our diverse reality. Do you have an idea of how to eradicate these divisions? 

I don’t feel I own the only righteous standpoint. Even if I have views, I don’t have a monopoly of the truth and I don’t need to impose it on others. On the other hand, I expect people with different views to be able to respect my own ones. With such an attitude, openness, readiness for dialogue and faith in man, into the world, in our civilisation, with no prejudice and the plain curiosity of the other man – I think I’ll do well.

We should all remember, especially in Europe, what happens when one group of people excludes another. How it ends. We certainly don't want history to repeat itself. There’s no question of excluding anyone at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. We have room for all those who respect others.

All symbolic gestures, such as the hanging of the rainbow flag, are important and we shouldn’t underestimate them. Over the past few years, I’ve had a feeling that the academic community is too neutral, too indifferent. We’ve had an illusory feeling that neutrality makes us innocent. That is not true, though. By being indifferent or neutral, we become co-responsible.

During the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Professor Marian Turski, a historian and former prisoner of the concentration camp, called for to us to not be indifferent but even to react.

In 2013, I painted a series of paintings entitled “Missing Commandments”, which included, among other things, “The 11th Commandment.Do not discriminate”. I think it’s worth being active. It’s worth always reacting to discrimination. I hope that even if we don’t always speak with one voice if we have different views, we will always be on the side of the other person.

In this position, one needs a certain amount of steadfastness and courage. Are you a brave person? 

I consider myself to be shy, but others see me as somebody brave, it’s such a paradox. So far, I’ve been facing up to reality. I’ve tried to be active and react to injustice or discrimination. I’ve always tried to be on the side of the victims, not the perpetrators, on the side of the excluded ones, not those who exclude others.

I hope I won’t be alone in all this. I hope people will understand how important young people’s sensitivity is. I’m very much supported in all this by my teenage daughter, for whom these are obvious values and priorities. She grew up in a different world already.

We adults cannot let down the generations to come.