Gabriel Andreescu

Gabriel Andreescu is a Romanian human rights activist and political scientist born on 8 April 1952 in Buzău. He is one of the few Romanian dissidents who openly opposed Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist regime in Romania. At present, he is professor in the Department of Political Science at the National School for Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA) in Bucharest, and an active member of several Romanian human rights organizations. He is also a prodigious journalist, writing and lecturing on topics such as multiculturalism, national minorities, religious freedom and secularism, the ethics and politics of memory and others. He is editor of the Romanian-language New Journal of Human Rights (Noua Revista de Drepturile Omului, formerly Revista Romana de Drepturile Omului). Andreescu attended the BP Hasdeu high school in his hometown, then obtained a BA in Physics from the University of Bucharest. He taught high school physics (1976–1980), then moved to Bucharest where he worked as a researcher for the National Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (1980–1989). During this period he published academic papers on linguistics, logics, and mathematical poetics among others. After the December 1989 anti-Communist revolution, Andreescu abandoned his career as a physicist to continue his activism for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. His work as a human rights activist, political analyst, journalist, and writer blended with academic teaching and research. Between 1983 and 1987 Gabriel Andreescu dispatched clandestine information on human rights abuses in Romania to Radio Free Europe and wrote several anti-communist articles and studies, some of which he managed to send and publish abroad. He was investigated by the Securitate (the Romanian communist-era political police) starting with 1979. He was arrested for his anti-communist activities in December 1987 and indicted for treason (but freed in January 1988 as result of international protests, and put under surveillance till the fall of the Communist regime).