Changing Tides of History, Cruising the Baltic Sea

Study Leaders

Josef Chytry
Josef Chytry is Senior Adjunct Professor of Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts, Oakland/San Francisco, and Founding Managing Editor of the Oxford journal Industrial and Corporate Change at the Institute for Business Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He has also lectured in the humanities for the University of California Extension program since 1989. Professor Chytry received a B.A. in international relations from George Washington University, a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University with a specialty in East Central Europe, and a Doctor of Philosophy in politics and European intellectual history from the University of Oxford. He has authored five books along with a forthcoming book on the civilization of Greater California. Among the subjects he teaches are: the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, Modernism & Postmodernism, German philosophy and culture, and East European history and politics.

Dwight Young
Dwight Young has been actively involved in historic preservation for over 30 years and has worked for the National Trust for Historic Preservation since 1977. He is the author of Alternatives to Sprawl and Saving America’s Treasures, as well as Dear First Lady: Letters to the White House and Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the files of the National Archives. He is best known as author of the “Back Page” feature in Preservation magazine. In 2003, the National Trust published a collection of these essays titled Road Trips through History. Dwight has enriched countless tours to historic destinations all over the world through his love and knowledge of architecture and unique places.

In Addition We'll Be Joined by Two Distinguished World Leaders:


Mikhail Gorbachev
Hear from Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union (1985-1991) and one of the 20th century's most pivotal leaders who ended the 50 years of nuclear brinkmanship known as the Cold War. During our private engagement, President Gorbachev will speak about the Soviet Union's evolution into modern Russia and his introduction of glasnost and perestroika, catalysts for the inception of democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe. Gorbachev built an extraordinary relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States at that time, and in so doing was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize. Retired from politics, Gorbachev continues to strive toward achieving his global vision of peace through the Gorbachev Foundation, founded in 1992 and dedicated to addressing the challenges of the post-Cold War world, and Green Cross International, founded in 1993 with the mission of securing a just and sustainable future through global interdependence and shared responsibility in humanity's relationship with nature.

Lech Walesa
By exclusive arrangement, Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, Polish hero and international symbol of the pursuit of freedom and democracy, will meet with our group in Gdansk to discuss his perspective on world progress through globalization. A worker in Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard, Walesa emerged as a worldwide symbol of the resistance against Communism during the shipyard workers' strike of 1980 and the establishment of the Solidarity labor movement. Despite winning the right to form an independent union, Walesa and Solidarity were forced to continue their struggle against the Soviet-backed regime of General Jaruzelski, which jailed Walesa and imposed martial law in Poland in December 1981. In 1983, Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize, a watershed moment widely considered to have been the first crack in the Soviet Union's Iron Curtain that crumbled with the Berlin Wall in 1989. Only the third foreign dignitary, after the Marquis de Lafayette and Winston Churchill, to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 1989, Walesa served as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995.