News

Rector Emeritus of Charles University Radim Palouš Passed Away

17 September, 2015

It is with great sadness that we have learned about the passing away of Professor Radim Palouš, the Rector Emeritus of Charles University who was instrumental in the founding of CERGE in 1990. 

Radim Palouš was a leading Czech philosopher and dissident who served with Vaclav Havel and others as the spokesperson for Charter 77 during the Communist regime. He became the first Rector of Charles University after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and during his term in office he re-established Charles University as a respected, non-ideological institution of higher learning.

As part of this process, he accepted the proposal that Josef Zieleniec and I presented to him to found CERGE as an American-style PhD program in Economics at Charles University and he worked closely with us and other Czech and American colleagues to establish CERGE as a priority institution reporting directly to the Rector. He supported the idea of integrating CERGE with the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences that we launched in 1992, thus creating CERGE-EI.

Professor Palouš maintained his interest in the development of CERGE-EI throughout his retirement and he delivered a memorable speech at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of CERGE. He was a true Renaissance man who understood much in the larger scheme of things, who fought for freedom in Czechoslovakia, and to whom we at CERGE-EI are fundamentally indebted for our existence and early progress.

Jan Švejnar