Ágnes Bátory and Sara Svensson both from the Central European University Budapest co-authored a remarkable paper about public consultations. They analyzed Viktor Orbán’s national consultations in Hungary, these are probably the most wide-scale consultative exercises in contemporary Europe. Some of our readers might not know that the Orbán government repeatedly sent questionnaires to every household in the country in some […]
László Palkovics, Hungary’s Minister of Innovation and Technology, will speak at the University of California at Berkeley on Thursday, April 4. The title of his presentation is “Hungary as a European Hub for Autonomous Vehicle Design and Validation” Mr. Palkovics has been invited by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is hosted by Professor Francesco Borrelli. Mr. Palkovics is a […]
On Monday, Central European University announced that new students enrolling starting in September 2019 would begin their studies in Vienna, rather than Budapest, after Hungary’s highest ranked university was forced out of the country by the regime of Viktor Orbán. “CEU has been forced out. This is unprecedented. A U.S. institution has been driven out of a country that is a NATO […]
The highly regarded Central European University (CEU) recently completed a new building in downtown Budapest which was named among the four finalists in the Royal Institute of British Architects International Prize, an award honoring the world’s best new buildings. The new structure is considered “a triumph of contextual architecture — a mixture of new and refurbished structures that delicately nod […]
Mr. David B. Cornstein, the new US Ambassador to Budapest, recently gave a lengthy interview to the Hungarian magazine Szombat. Amb. Cornstein discussed his mother’s Hungarian family roots, his career goals and several issues of US-Hungary relations. In general, Cornstein does not see problems with Hungary’s Human Rights record, press freedom or separation of powers. In fact, he insists that […]
The Orbán regime introduced legislation to shut down accredited gender studies programs offered by universities in Hungary. Academics now have 24 hours to respond to the government’s plan. The ban will primarily impact students at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (ELTE)–the only institution in Hungary, other than Central European University, to offer gender studies at the graduate level, and the […]
Attila Chikán, the Minister of the Economy during the initial years of the first Orbán government (1998-2002), broke down in tears on live television Thursday night. He was one of hundreds of mostly private Hungarian citizens who were listed in the Figyelő propaganda weekly as being “mercenaries of Soros.” Barely 11 years ago, on the nineteenth anniversary of Fidesz, Viktor Orbán […]
Professor Christopher Ball teaches at the Business School of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. In 2013 he was handpicked by then Hungarian Ambassador György Szapáry, an Orbán confidant, to serve as Honorary Consul. Professor Ball, Director of the Central European Institute and István Széchenyi Chair in International Economics, lived in Hungary for a couple of years but does not speak […]
Gergely Gulyás, vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, expressed concern that the party which once limited its membership to people under the age of 35 has now lost Hungary’s youth vote. “Success is most certainly rather attractive to young people, but let me exercise self-criticism: even if Fidesz is successful, today it is not appealing enough to young people,” […]
This week started with embarrassment for Viktor Orbán’s regime and especially for Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog, who experienced a thoroughly public snubbing by Washington DC on the on-going saga of the planned shuttering of Central European University. On Monday, Mr. Balog, whose gigantic and unruly ministry oversees the education portfolio in Hungary, told journalists of the Index news […]
