Adam Michnik (1946) is editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the leading independent and quality daily in Poland. A co-founder of KOR (Committee for the Defense of Workers) in 1976, he was detained many times during 1965-1980. He was a prominent „Solidarity" activist during the 1980s and spent a total of six years in Polish prisons for activities opposing the communist regime. He took part in the Roundtable negotiations that ended communist rule in Poland and was subsequently elected to Poland's first non-communist parliament in 1989.
A historian, he is the author of many books and his articles have appeared in Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Libération, El Pais, Lettre International, New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, etc..
Mr. Michnik is the recipient of a doctorate honoris causa from The New School for Social Research in New York, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan and Connecticut College.
He has been awarded, among many other prizes, the French Pen Club Freedom Award 1982, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award 1986, the 1996 OSCE Prize on Journalism and Democracy, the Golden Pen from Bauer Verlag, the 1999 Francisco Cerecedo Journalist Prize.
In May 2000 Adam Michnik received from the International Press Institute (IPI) the title of Press Freedom Hero for his courage and dedication to the principles of free expression.
In 2001 Adam Michnik received the Erasmus Prize “for his role in the development of civil society in post-war Poland, for courage and respect for his political adversaries, for keeping intellectual distance in his sharp analysis of the cultural and political forces at work before the events of 1989 and for founding the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza which through its analysis has helped Poland develop a democratic tradition”.
In September 2003 Adam Michnik was made Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government. He is Ambassador of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008.
