Recording 6 — NN’s call to me while I was in Jareniówka
Phone recording — NN called Dr Kilarski, not the other way round: she called from her own mobile phone in Kraków to his mobile while he was in Jareniówka — hence the interference on the recording.* Shorter than the other conversations, but important for its candor and direct tone: NN speaks spontaneously, without the formal context of an NCN meeting.
The material contains statements in which NN confirms earlier accounts of pressure from NCN management and expresses her own feelings about what happened. It is a private voice — a complement to the recordings made at work.
A. Escalation of the conflict with Prof. Marcin Drąg
NN reports that Prof. Drąg is escalating the conflict with Dr. Kilarski by writing to various people (rectors, Prof. Melody Swartz). She notes that Drąg constructs a narrative of an alleged joint action by NN and Dr. Kilarski — using a slash-linked construct between the two surnames in his emails — and repeatedly answers with evasive "no comments" to messages whose content he himself cannot classify as improper.
B. The role of Drąg's informant (originally a planned NAWA collaborator)
This thread concerns a third party — anonymised here as "K." — who had originally been envisaged as Dr. Kilarski's collaborator on the 2020 NAWA "Polish Returns" grant. According to NN's account, "K." had been forwarding Drąg the content of messages that Dr. Kilarski sent her, including Messenger chats. The recording reviews the original wording of one message (from 4 March) in which — as NN and Dr. Kilarski establish on tape — there is no plural-form phrase on which Drąg's "conspiracy" charge had relied.
C. Position of Prof. Melody Swartz (University of Chicago)
NN and Dr. Kilarski recall correspondence between Prof. Melody Swartz (Dr. Kilarski's supervisor at the University of Chicago) and Prof. Drąg, in which Swartz expressly confirms that the University of Chicago was "fully aware" of Dr. Kilarski's collaboration with Polish groups and that there had never been any "miscontact". Despite this — according to the recording — Drąg continued to assert that the "American side did not agree", ignoring Swartz's written position.
D. "We have to take this to court" — NN's stated position
NN states explicitly that she intends to take the matter against Prof. Drąg to court and that she has already consulted a lawyer and a personal advisor. At the same time, she asks Dr. Kilarski not to post anything about the case on social media, judging that such publication would only "fuel the fire" for the other side.
E. Drąg as a "big fish" in his institution — parallels to the Macchiarini affair
NN draws an analogy with the Paolo Macchiarini case (a compromised researcher associated with the Karolinska Institute) and assesses that Prof. Drąg occupies, within his university, the position of someone the institution will defend "as a wall" because of the research funding he brings in. NN's conclusion: a conflict with such a person calls for a court route, not a public-commentary one.