Professor Dragoljub Mićunović, a distinguished philosopher, university professor, politician, and one of the founders of modern democratic thought in Serbia, passed away on May 26, 2026, at the age of 96.
For the Institute of Social Sciences, his name carries special significance, as he was the first head of the Centre for Philosophy and Social Theory within the Institute of Social Sciences, which later developed into an independent institute. He joined the Institute as an expelled professor of the Faculty of Philosophy, together with seven other intellectuals, during a period when academic freedom was subjected to strong political pressures.
Throughout his long and diverse career, he remained committed to the ideals of democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and political affiliation, refusing to compromise when it came to the fundamental values of a free society.
He was born on July 14, 1930, in the Toplica region in southern Serbia. He spent his childhood in Skopje, where he began his education, and after the Second World War attended secondary schools in Kuršumlija and Prokuplje. During the conflict between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1948, he was among the members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia who were suspected of being “Cominformists” and Stalinists, for which he spent twenty months imprisoned on Goli Otok. Upon his return, he enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, where he graduated in philosophy in 1954.
Professor Dragoljub Mićunović’s biography encompasses an exceptionally rich public, academic, and political career. The public will remember him as a professor, one of the founders, a member of the Presidency and the Main Board of the Democratic Party, a member of parliament, President of the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro, as well as head of the parliamentary delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE. He also left a significant mark as a writer and scholar.
At the Institute of Social Sciences, he will be remembered as a colleague and intellectual from whom generations had much to learn.