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23 January 2011
A politically motivated attack on philosophers in Hungary?
Very disturbing reports are coming from Hungary. This post provides an overview, with links to other posts. It seems the new right-of-center government is using its friendly newspaper to incite popular opinion against a number of prominent Hungarian philosophers, including Agnes Heller, who spent many years at the New School in New York. The linked post puts it like this:
Magyar Nemzet (“Hungarian Nation”) claimed that those philosophers had missused funds on a large scale. All of them are considered “liberal”, i.e. skeptical about the present homeland politics of their country. It seems that after considerable philosophical infighting some insider has triggered a police investigation into the finances of six projects carefully selected to incite a maximum of populist indignation. Magyar Nemzet runs an almost daily campaign on behalf of the Orban government, insinuating that an elitist intellectual clique has taken control of Hungarian academic life. (Alas, still an effective type of accusation.)…
Laszlo Tengelyi, a native Hungarian, teaching philosophy in Germany, has addressed an open letter to the most important German philosophical associations in order to draw attention to what he calls revenge* against political opponents. It is a disturbing story.
Tengelyi’s original letter is here. We will publish an English translation as soon as possible.
* UPDATE: “campaign” is a better term here for Tengelyi’s word Hetzjadt.
UPDATE 2: a petition has been generated; it has a brief English summary of the issue.
Posted by John Protevi on 23 January 2011 at 08:55 in Academic freedom , Hungary, John Protevi, Philosophy, Political Economy (of Higher Education, and in general), Politics | Permalink
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D.P. O’Connell said…There was also an interesting interview yesterday in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) with writer and historian Geörgy Dalos, who lives in Berlin. He mentioned the following: “Even intellectuals are persecuted in this way; at the present time, e.g., a whole group of philosophers are overrun with prosecutions by the tax authorities. In a small country like Hungary, where everything, even Philosophy, lives only by the state, this is threatening to their very existence.” Here is the link, for those who want to read the interview (in German): http://www.taz.de/1/politik/europa/artikel/1/es-fehlt-die-angstfreie-generation/
PS: John, btw, if you want any help with a translation, if someone else is not already on it, I’d be happy to turn one out later today.
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