Mika Brzezinski is an acclaimed political reporter, an influential and award-winning community activist, and a widely read writer. In her professional activity, several parallel areas appear to permeate and enrich each other. Her professional, publishing, social and academic activities revolve around themes of female identity and the social role of women, so perhaps it would be appropriate to start with the fact that Mika Brzezinski is a woman.
Mika Brzezinski was born into an immigrant family in New York City as the (third) child of artist-sculptor Emilie Beneš Brzezinski and political science professor and later national security advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski. She completed her education at Williams College. For her later work as a journalist, she was awarded the Bicentennial Medal by her Alma Mater. She started this chapter of her professional life as a reporter for local television news, and subsequently went on to work for major television stations covering national political events: ABC, CBS and NBC. In 2001, she reported live from ground zero in New York City after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and since 2008, she has co-hosted, and indeed co-anchored, a political morning show (Morning Joe) in MSNBC that forms the basis of, and even sets the standard for, the "political diet" of millions of people around the world - as scholarly analyses of political news sources (at least American ones) have shown, the role of television is still significantly greater compared to the impact of social media.
Each recipient of the honorary doctorate of SWPS University joins an academic community that strives to act in a manner consistent with the three core values of Courage, Responsibility and Openness. Therefore, it is important that the activities of persons bearing this title also serve to pursue these values. The concepts of perspective and voice are particularly important in Mika Brzezinski's writing, journalism, and social output.
Mika Brzezinski is the author of books relating to gender equality issues: All Things at Once published in 2010 (appearing in Poland under the title “Moja pasja, moja rodzina”), Knowing Your Value published in 2011 and again in 2018 under the new title of Know Your Value (in Polish: “Znaj swoją wartość”) and Comeback Careers published in 2020 (which is yet to be released in Poland), as well as several works thematically related to Know Your Value. In these books, the Author uniquely combines academic knowledge from a variety of disciplines - such as political science, psychology, sociology, or management and quality studies (most notably in Know your value) - with the personal story of the woman she was, wanted to be, and was becoming at that time. In this multi-voiced narrative, Mika Brzezinski, as author and narrator, manages to put her point across not only by having the story of inequality based on scientific knowledge, but also by referring to her own individual female experience: as a daughter, a wife, a mother, a worker, a journalist, an American and a European all at the same time. In her story, she is each of these women individually and all of them at once, allowing her audience to see the universal dimension of the female experience-even if the reader chooses to identify the narrator with only one of these characters. Once we see her as the privileged daughter of a member of the Washington elite, Brzezinski counters this perspective with the voice of someone who has had to prove her worth time and time again, facing obstacles that men rarely encounter in their path. Once we see the stereotypical American woman, we cannot ignore the story of the difficulty of internalizing American social norms by a representative of a family originating from Central and Eastern Europe, raised in the spirit of authenticity, striving to be herself and searching for her own voice. And if we wanted to categorize the narrator as a career woman, this also cannot be done in isolation from her reflections on motherhood. The narrator puts herself in a subordinate role - caring, subservient, and "inferior" - and in a privileged one at the same time as Caucasian, educated, and well-born. As a woman of high social standing, she does not abandon her feminine identity and continues to identify with women as a group. A careful reading of Mika Brzezinski's books convinces us that they have gained such wide reception not because of their "privileged" perspective, but because of the sincerity of the stories and the resulting ability to bring together various different points of view. In this open and bold manner, Mika Brzezinski encourages you to embrace a woman's perspective: one of a person who must reconcile various life roles, responsibilities, conflicting social expectations, her own needs, and the needs of others - in ways that the world does not expect of people who are not women. Reflections on power and hierarchy in Mika Brzezinski's work gain a universal dimension - inequalities are perpetuated in intergenerational transmission regardless of cultural, class, economic or socio-political context. And when, eventually, the reader is tempted to see in Mika Brzezinski a person who takes over the female perspective - she lets others speak out.
This is because Mika Brzezinski does not stop at sharing her story as a writer. And in any event it would be difficult to classify her as a writer since she would definitely not want to be called a writer herself. After all, this classification does not nearly grasp the entire scope of her activities. It is also her efforts of a practical nature and her impact on society that are particularly worthy of emphasis and recognition. After the publication of her book Knowing your value, which reverberated all around the world, Mika Brzezinski launched a foundation under the same name to address gender equality issues. It promotes activity among women in the academic and social areas, in culture and the arts, in business and politics, in academia and beyond. This work undoubtedly demonstrates her social responsibility: it gives women a platform to speak up for their own cause. Firstly, it is a platform for the acquisition of reliable, evidence-based knowledge on the ways in which gender inequality manifests itself, and also on its causes and consequences: whether they are political, psychological, social or economic. Secondly, it is a platform whose existence does not allow the problem of inequality to be marginalized in public discourse - it makes it socially visible. With initiatives such as 50 over 50, it is becoming a partner in the discussion on the intersection of gender and other social categories. The empowerment of women in Mika Brzezinski’s social work is the most prominent thread against the backdrop of her other fields of activity.
Her output in the academic field is also noteworthy. In this context, special attention should be given to Mika Brzezinski's involvement as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Harvard University during the 2017/2018 academic year. During this time, she also gave numerous lectures and conducted meetings with students of other American universities. This work was primarily related to the area of gender wage inequality in the American political-economic system. The focus on individual and group factors, without situating the role of these factors in the broader context of the socio-political status quo, may be somewhat unsatisfying. However, what is a weakness can also be a strength. The threads of "female destiny," the female bond between mothers, daughters and sisters are intertwined with political threads such as self-determination, finding one's own place at the intersection of the public and private spheres of life, intersectionality - in terms of gender, ethnicity or age. Again, through her individual voice, Mika Brzezinski is capable of universalizing the female experience in a political sense. And offering a different perspective: that in society, women do not always have to ride on the back seat, they can be number one as well.
Mika Brzezinski's journalistic, writing and social output has already been recognized by social organizations and academic institutions, which has been reflected in numerous awards for her professional achievements and for her work in the field of equal treatment. She has also won the position of Visiting Fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, partly in relation to her work in the field of gender equality. The analysis presented above also confirms that her work is consistent with the values represented by the academic community of SWPS University. Mika Brzeziński's efforts for the advancement of equal treatment, which have both an intellectual and a practical dimension, fit in well with the history of the SWPS University as an academic community that is always looking for new ways to put theory into practice - describing, predicting and explaining the social world in order to make it at least slightly better.
Professor Aleksandra Cisłak-Wójcik
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities
Vice-Rector for Research
Institute of Psychology • Head of the Center for Research on Social Relations
Faculty of Psychology in Warsaw • Department of Social Psychology