Graduate School stands with CEU Budapest
Proposed amendments to the Hungarian Higher Education Legislation "represents an attack on academic freedom"
30.03.2017
The Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies is deeply concerned for the future of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest as a free and independent international graduate university. Recently proposed amendments to the Hungarian Higher Education Law have obviously been directed against CEU and would make its further work in Hungary impossible. The two speakers of the Graduate School, Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel and Prof. Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer, therefore explain their solidarity with the CEU, which has become one of the Graduate School's most important international cooperation partners, and urge the Hungarian Minister of Human Resources (responsible for the areas of health, social affairs, youth, education, culture and sport), Zoltán Balog, to withdraw the amendments to the law.
The Hungarian government has proposed amendments to the National Higher Education Law that ultimately would make it impossible for Central European University – and possibly other international institutions – to continue operations within the country.
The Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, a joint doctoral programme by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Universität Regensburg, has been collaborating with CEU successfully on various occasions. CEU has become a core international partner. Thus, the Graduate School’s coordinators, Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel and Prof. Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer, express their deep concern with regard to the foreseeable negative effects of the proposed amendments to the Hungarian Higher Education Law on CEU as a free and independent international graduate university.
“The proposed amendments to the law would not only foil the great achievements of establishing the CEU, but would also cause irreversible damage to Hungary as location of research. The Act represents an attack on academic freedom,” Schulze Wessel and Brunnbauer declared in their letter of solidarity with CEU. They urge minister Balog to withdraw the amendments to the law.