Former chief of staff for the office of the president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel. A political philosopher from Slovakia, a prominent personality of the 1968 Prague Spring. He was expelled from public and academic life, persecuted and imprisoned. As one of the original signatories of Charter 77, he became an active participant in the dissident movement, which culminated in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The arrest and trial of Kusy and Carnogursky in the summer and autumn of 1989 was one of the last major events in the old regime. Since '89, he has been elected to the Federal Parliament, and served as Rector of Comenius University in Bratislava. Board member of the Czech Helsinki Committee for Human Rights; heads the UNESCO Chair on Culture of Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights.