Abstract
The respected Hungarian Academy of Sciences is losing funding and its independence.
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has borne witness to much political upheaval since its foundation in 1825. Built and financed by the great statesman István Széchenyi as Hungary entered its golden age, in the 1950s it was nationalised by the Soviet-backed totalitarian regime of Mátyás Rákosi as part of a reign of terror that culminated in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
Nowadays, the threat to academia in Hungary comes not from abroad, but from the nationalistic government of Orbán, the country’s populist leader who has proclaimed Hungary an “illiberal” state. Now the autonomy of the academy is under threat.
According to the Hungarian budget for 2019, some 25bn forints ($89m) – almost half of the academy’s direct government funding – will be transferred to the new Innovation and Technology Ministry, despite objections expressed by academy president László Lovász in his talks with the Minister for Innovation and Technology László Palkovics.
Since the initial plan – to which the academy director was reportedly given 54 minutes to respond – the government has offered a “compromise deal”, under which government delegates would sit next to academics in the academy’s new “management”. Despite the talk of compromise, the minister’s rhetoric has remained threatening and reminiscent of darker eras.
“The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has shifted to direct politicisation on certain issues and against the government’s negotiating and professional intentions,” Palkovics said in an interview in pro-Orbán business magazine Figyelő. “An unprecedented situation has arisen.”
Czárán told Index on Censorship that “any compromise is capitulation in this case. The autonomy of the academy either remains intact or will be lost altogether. Once the government decides it will take control over an institution, it does so without asking questions or listening to expert advice. In my personal opinion, under such circumstances it is only rigid resistance that may have some, at least symbolic, effect”.
Czárán believes Palkovics is the mercenary hired to execute the rollback. “No member (or chairman) of the academy has a say in this matter, I am afraid,” he said.
“I do not see any hope for the academy not to become directly dependent on the government during the coming months. How this will translate to the actual funding of research and our everyday research practice is to be seen in the next few years.”
The academy’s scientific institute directors also view the move as an attack on academic freedom. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, one director of an academy scientific institute told Index: “I’m afraid that we are in the freefall in time.
“The way we are being treated is just like the communist era in the 1960s and we may end up in 1948, when the communist dictatorship was formed. It is happening without the brute physical destruction of the opposition, forcing them to camps, but economically disabling anyone who criticises you is not acceptable.”
The attack on the sciences is the latest in a series of attacks against academia in Hungary. In March 2017, Orbán targeted the country’s top-ranked educational institution, the Central European University, which was founded according to the Open Society values of the philosopher Karl Popper and specialises in humanities. Last month, bolstered by a third consecutive election victory in April, the government demanded the discontinuation of gender studies teaching at Hungarian universities.
Meanwhile Figyelő has listed the names of researchers at the academy who research “liberal” areas such as migration, LGBT rights and gender studies. The government has also created a network of institutions in the fields of humanities including political science, linguistics and history, such as the House of Terror museum and the Veritas Research Institute, which reinterpret history in a manner more pleasing to the Orbán government.
“From January 1 it will resemble a parallel network of research institutes in the humanities. The minister will be able to transfer the budgets of the academic institutes to these parallel bodies,” the academy-institute director said.
“What CEU was in 2017 is the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2018. It is completely identical: for political reasons a whole branch of education or science is just eaten by the wild beasts of politics.
“The new budget structure is a sword of Damocles. This will create an atmosphere of fear and the academy will simply have its mouth shut, and this is the main reason for all this: because politicians do not want to hear criticism. Humanities are in danger, hard science not yet. The attack is to diminish criticism, to give more money for the new parallel research institutes,” the director continued.
A covered bust of founder István Széchenyi inside the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (top) and the outside of the building, Budapest, August 2018
CREDIT: Mária Volkov (top); Dan Nolan
“For the moment I’m calm because they have not done this in the pure sciences because the Hungarian elite is small enough in hard sciences. However, in humanities they have created a large cohort. There is a fear that the academy’s current institutions can be just shut down.”
The institutes have been playing a game with the Orbán government for some years already. From 2012, scientific institutes were forced to become research centres due to a stipulation that independence required at least 100 employees. Only the 10 largest research centres set up have managed to hold on to their independence.
The worrisome developments in Hungary have attracted international attention. The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (Allea), which groups almost 60 academies in more than 40 countries, wrote an open letter to Palkovics, saying: “The developments in Hungary have provoked responses internationally. Glaring oversights in the design and consultation phase of this law threaten the scientific autonomy and the quality of scientific output of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. We believe that if the autonomy and capacity of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are diminished, the reputation of Hungary and Hungarian science abroad would be unnecessarily tarnished.” Palkovics has yet to reply to the letter, which Allea sent on 25 June.
In a statement from Allea published on 21 August, they continued to express their growing concern at the Hungarian government’s intervention in the sciences, adding:
“By its very actions, the Hungarian government politicises scientific research and jeopardises Hungary’s strong European and international partnerships in science.”
Allea’s president, Antonio Loprieno, told Index on Censorship that “academic freedom has seen frequent challenges throughout time, sometimes directed towards Allea members, sometimes at universities or specific faculties within a university”.
He said that whether those attacks could be attributed to Orbanism would depend on each case. “Attacking or trying to discredit scientists is not a Hungarian invention, but rather seems a common method of doing reactionary politics. After all, science tends to have a liberal bias, often at odds with ideologically driven government policies,” Loprieno added.
For the institute director, the signs are clear: what is happening to the academy is part of a wider Hungarian culture struggle.
“There have been pre-emptive acts from the academy to favour projects that are viewed more positively by the government: I don’t even think this was a deliberate decision, it is simply in the atmosphere,” the director told Index.
The climate of fear may already be influencing other academic funding decisions. The academy’s Lendülat grant scheme is now backing pro-conservative historical research projects in keeping with government values. One of the 21 research grantees for 2018 will be “Catholic and Protestant village priest lifestyles, mentality and community role in the 18th-20th century”. Other government-funded Lendülat projects for 2018 include research into the European liturgy in the Middle Ages and the history of Greek Catholics in Hungary.
Political scientist and researcher Zoltán Gábor Szűcs said of the latest moves: “As I see it this is a deal offered at gunpoint and it means that the autonomy of the academy is over.”
“Every day I face the question: ‘How far can I play this game?’,” the institute director said. “How far can I be this scientific representative within the government?”