On November 4, 2014, over one hundred people crowded into the Commonwealth Club of California to hear Adam Michnik, Polish activist; Editor-in-Chief, Gazeta Wyborcza; and author, The Trouble with History: Morality, Revolution, and Counterrevolution. A leader of the anti-Communist opposition in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, Michnik spoke at the Club regarding the position of Poland in view of recent elections (as former Prime Minister Donald Tusk accepted the role of president of the European Union), the current situation in Russia and Central Europe, and anti-Semitism in Europe today.
From November 11-18, Professor Marcin Wodzinski, Chair of Jewish Studies at Wroclaw University, served as Scholar-in-Residence in the Bay Area and gave lectures at several Bay Area universities on Hasidism. These included the keynote lecture at the conference on Hasidism at the Graduate Theological Union's Center for Jewish Studies and lectures at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley. Professor Wodzinski also worked on the Core Exhibition of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in his area of expertise, which he then shared with the Bay Area audiences.
