On 20 December 1968, the parliament of communist Poland adopted amendments to the law on higher education. It allowed the position and academic title of docent to be given to doctoral students without a postdoctoral degree, and even that this title could be given to master’s students. The taking of such a decision, which quickly became infamous, had its political, both domestic and international reasons. The whole issue had its origins in the Middle East. 

From 5 to 10 June 1967, the so-called Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours was underway. Because of the prominent support given to Israel by the United States, the Soviet Union and the dependent communist states condemned Israel, accusing it of complicity with American imperialism. 

In Communist-ruled Poland, these events coincided with intra-party games. The Polish United Workers’ Party began campaign against people of Jewish origin. In his speeches, its first secretary Władysław Gomułka (1905-1982) implied that they were not loyal citizens and assured them that they would have no problem getting permission to go to Israel. A kind of ‘incentive’ to leave the People’s Republic of Poland was the dismissals from work. When the student anti-system demonstrations took place in March 1968, the leadership of the Polish United Workers’ Party decided to depict the students as naive victims of an alleged Jewish plot. 

In connection with the protests at the universities, employees of Jewish origin, who constituted a valuable and numerous part of the academic staff, in many cases top-class specialists, began to be expelled. Almost 500 university teachers left Poland. This gap was difficult to fill. An attempt to resolve this situation was to significantly lower the standards for staffing positions and granting the title of assistant professor. As well as spoiling academic standards, this also involved the introduction of party-appointed staff into the universities. In colloquial language, those people were contemptuously referred to as “March associate professors”.