Word: polished
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...University officials announced that Polish labor leader Lech Walesa had accepted an invitation to speak at this year's Commencement exercises. An acceptance would have marked the dissident's first trip out of Poland since the crackdown on Solidarity in December 1981, and his first trip to the United States ever. But the University's hopes were dashed when later that same day. UPI reported that Walesa could not make it, a fact it confirmed later in the month through secret intermediaries. (For a detailed account of the Walesa invitation, see page...
...Aloian enlisted the services of a number of intermediaries. First they gave the letter to Stanislaw Baranczak, an associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literature. Baranczak, himself a Solidarity member, whose arrival at Harvard came after several years of complex and delicate diplomacy, translated the communication into Polish...
...point did Harvard notify the State Department, the Polish embassy to the United States, or any other official agency, according to Aloian. "We informed [the State Department] of the acceptance--until then, they were not aware of the invitation," he said after the news was publicized. "This is essentially a private invitation on the part of a university to a private individual...
...Walesa's case, University officials suspected immediate publicity might be useful in clearing the way for Walesa to travel to Harvard. An early announcement, they reasoned, might cause pressure to accumulate against the Polish Communist authorities, making it increasingly awkward for them to deny Walesa the permission he would need to make the trip to Cambridge...
...University took extraordinary steps to publicize the news. Before the release was sent out to the media, Robin Schmidt, vice president for government and community affairs, hand-delivered copies of it to two journalists spending the year at Harvard on Nieman Fellowships: Andrzej Wroblewski of the Polish monthly Organization Review and Charles Sherman of the International Herald Tribune. Sherman filed a story on the announcement that afternoon...