Piotr Tadeusz Gliński was born in Warsaw on 20 April 1954. In 1973, he graduated from the Bolesław Prus High School in Warsaw. He studied at the Institute of Economic Sciences and the Institute of Sociology of the University of Warsaw, earning a master's degree in economics in 1978. He then completed doctoral studies in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1984, on the basis of Labor Economic Conditions Lifestyle: Urban Families in Poland in the Seventies, written under the direction of Andrzej Siciński, he received a Ph.D. degree in humanities. He received his habilitation at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology in 1997 with a thesis entitled The Polish Greens: The Social Movement in Transition.
Professionally associated since the late 1970s with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, he has held various positions. From 1997 to 2005, Head of the Civil Society. He was a professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Bialystok and head of the Department of Sociology at the University. He was awarded internships outside Poland, lecturing in European universities. His academic specialty was the study of social movements, sociology of culture and civil society, as well as in the social aspects of environmental protection. He participated in the work of the Committee for Research and Forecasting Poland in 2000 and the Committee of Man and the Environment. He has been a consultant for national and international institutions, including the Polish ministries and the United Nations Development Programme.
In 1986, he co-organized the Section of Social Forecasting of the Polish Sociological Association. From 1995 to 1997 he was treasurer of the PSA, Vice-President of the organization, and from 2005 to 2011 he served as its President. In 1989 he became a member of the Social Ecological Institute, which he headed from 1997 to 2003. He was a founding member of the Society for the creation of the Mazury National Park.[1] He is also a member of the Collegium Invisibile.[2] In 2003, he participated in the creation of the party Greens 2004,[3] but due to its adoption of a leftist agenda, ultimately did not join. In 2008 Gliński received the title of professor of humanities.[4]
An important part of Polish heritage is the awareness of the common past of many generations of Polish and Jewish people living on this land, and, of course, here in Warsaw as well. That world was destroyed by the Nazi German criminals during World War II, but it was reborn in the form of Polish–Israeli friendship and cooperation...We died together then and it is our collective responsibility today to remind the world of this. I emphasize that the Polish state is making great efforts to fulfil this obligation… I say with great conviction that this memory is deeply rooted in the meaning of the nation as a cultural and historical community, not only an ethnic one—a meaning shared by the government of the Republic of Poland, which I represent. We rely on an understanding of national community that includes—not excludes—its members. Polish Jews have built, are building, and—I truly hope and am deeply convinced—will continue to build this community.
