H.E. Antoni Macierewicz

Minister Macierewicz was the leader of the anti-communist resistance in the Polish People’s Republic. He founded the Workers Defense Committee (KOR), the forerunner of Solidarity, later directing Solidarity’s Center for Social Research. He also established Głos, one of the first independent publications of the communist era. A former political prisoner, he was arrested over twenty times.

Since the fall of communism, Minister Macierewicz has served at the highest levels of government. He is deputy leader of the largest party in the parliament, Law and Justice. Minister Macierewicz has been the minister of internal affairs, head of the Military Counterintelligence Service, secretary of state in the Ministry of National Defense, and chairman of the Verification Commission.

On October 25, 2015, Minister Macierewicz was reelected for a sixth term as a member of the Sejm, the main chamber of the Parliament of Poland. Minister Macierewicz is responsible for two eponymous documents, which played influential roles in establishing national security institutions immune to foreign influence.

An academic, Minister Macierewicz has been on faculty at the Department of Iberian Studies of the University of Warsaw and has taught Polish history at the Jagiellonian University. He has written numerous scholarly articles published in Polish Ethnography. Minister Macierewicz is a Knight of the Order of Polonia Restituta, bestowed upon him in 1990 by the President of Poland in exile. He was named the 2010 Man of the Year by Gazeta Polska. In 2015, Macierewicz inaugurated the Rutgers Council on Public and International Affairs World Leaders Forum. Minister Macierewicz holds a master’s degree from the Institute of History of the University of Warsaw.