Czech President Petr Pavel appointed the new rector of Palacký University Olomouc at Prague Castle. On 1 May, jurist Michael Kohajda is going to take over the leadership of the second oldest university in the country.
The term of office of the current UP rector, Dr Martin Procházka, terminates on the last day of April. The very next day, 1 May, Michael Kohajda will take over the office. The UP Academic Senate elected him to head the university at its January meeting, when fourteen senators gave him their votes in the second round of the secret ballot.
The election results and the protocol on the UP Rector election, along with the documents for the appointment, were handed over by the President of the UP Academic Senate, Irena Smolová, to the Czech Minister of Education. He submitted the documents to the Office of the President of the Czech Republic, which set the date of the ceremony for 15 April.
The UP Rector’s term of office is four years, so Michael Kohajda will head Palacký University Olomouc until 30 April 2029.
In the modern era of the reinstated university in Olomouc, altogether fifteen rectors have headed it since 1946: 13 men and 2 women. Kohajda will become the sixteenth. The university he will manage currently has roughly twenty-three thousand students studying at eight faculties and more than four thousand employees.
doc. JUDr. Michael Kohajda, Ph.D. (b. 1981)
He graduated from the UP Faculty of Law (UP FL) with a Master’s degree in Law and Legal Science. He obtained his doctoral degree and received his habilitation in Financial Law at the Charles University Faculty of Law. He has taught at UP FL for almost twenty years. Since 2020, he has held the position of Vice-Dean – (first for Doctoral Studies, Qualification Procedures, and Finances, including investments; currently he is Vice-Dean for External Relations and Investments). He is a member of the UP FL Scholarly Board and several other boards at the law faculties in Olomouc and Prague.
His research and publication activities focus on financial law, especially on public budgets, taxation, banking, insurance, and capital markets. His main professional interest involves financial system rules and supervision. In recent years, he has also focused on the legal rules related to the issuance and handling of crypto assets. Since 2024 he has been the principal investigator of the Czech Science Foundation standard project Crypto Assets as a Threat to Sovereignty. As regards international cooperation, he has undertaken a number of international research and teaching stays in Europe, the USA, and Australia. In addition to his academic activities, he has a successful legal practice.
In order to contribute to the development of society, he has been involved in politics. Between 2014 and 2022, he was a member of the Šumperk City Council, where he focused on budget policy and investments. In 2021, thanks to preferential votes, he won a seat in the Parliament of the Czech Republic for the Olomouc Region. He serves, among others, as a member of the Budget Committee in the Parliament. He was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies’ special investigative commission on the tragic event that took place at the Charles University Faculty of Arts in December 2023.
