Professor Lachmayer has organised a workshop on “Academic Freedom in a hybrid illiberal regime – Global lessons from Hungary”.
Date: April 25-26, 2024
Venue: Sigmund Freud University, Faculty of Law (Vienna)
Since 2010, academia has been under increasing pressure in Hungary. While the expulsion of the Central European University brought considerable international atention, it was only the tip of the iceberg. Infringement of academic freedom targets teaching, research, and dissemination, and has many faces: defunding or banning academic programs, harassment and dismissal of academics, censoring curricula or conferences, as well as outlawing or refusing to cooperate with or provide information to nongovernmental organizations and human rights defenders, which are valuable sources for academic research. Technically, it involves bringing independent public research institutions under government control, reallocating funds to an alternative network of government-dependent and government-friendly research institutes, think-tanks, and GONGO’s, taking-over the national accreditation board and the national science fund, as well as a sweeping reorganization of almost the entire public higher educational sector to be managed by politically controlled foundations.