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Zdzislaw Najder was born October 31, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland. He studied Polish literature and philosophy at Warsaw University from 1949 to 1954 and then travelled abroad in 1959 to continue his studies at Oxford University, where he remained for ten years, receiving bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in philosophy and Polish literature. Najder returned to Poland on the completion of his studies at Oxford, earning an additional doctorate in Polish literature in 1978. There he served on the staff of the Institute for Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and was coeditor of the Warsaw literary monthly Tworczosc (Creativity).

When martial law was declared in December 1981, Najder, internationally renowned for his work on Joseph Conrad, was a visiting scholar at Oxford University. A supporter of Solidarity, he opted to remain in the West rather than return to Jaruzelski's Poland. On the recommendation of Jan Nowak, Najder was hired as the director of Radio Free Europe's Polish-language service. In response, a Polish military court sentenced him to death in absentia for the crime of collaborating with American intelligence services. Najder was the first language service director hired right out of the Eastern bloc and he remained with the Polish service until 1987. Under his leadership the service sharpened its criticism of the communist regime, sometimes blurring the line between news and opinion. One of his additions to the RFE lineup was a program entitled The Poland That Could Be, a program speculating on a future Poland free from communist rule.
 

After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Najder returned to Poland, serving as an adviser to President Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Jan Olszewski. Najder now divides his time between teaching and politics, serving both as a professor of English literature at the European Academy in Cracow and as an adviser to Poland's minister for European integration. Najder continues to publish works on Conrad, focusing on the author's Polish roots; his Joseph Conrad: A Life remains one of the definitive biographies of the writer.

The Zdzisław Najder Collection, in the RFE/RL Collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is open to the public and available for research in the Hoover Archives Reading Room. It includes extensive documentation of Najder's time with the Polish service, including diaries, correspondence, broadcast scripts, reports, and press summaries concerning RFE, Polish dissidents, the Solidarity movement, and political conditions in Poland.