Before leaving for the United States, American ambassador to Hungary David Pressman has managed to at least able to dole out money to Viktor Orbán critics in the Hungarian media. One of the people advising Pressman on who to give U.S. taxpayer money to has now been revealed to have tried to abolish the notion of academic freedom over political differences.
Recently, Balázs Orbán, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s political director, presented his doctoral dissertation (“Constitutional legal relationship between the free mandate and national sovereignty”) at the ELTE Faculty of Law this year, which was not unanimously approved by the Academic Doctoral Council (TDT) in order to start his PhD process. He will still be able to proceed; but Hungarian media pounced on the fact that it almost never happens that someone is not given unanimous approval.
This year, Orbán was the only one at the Faculty of Law of ELTE for whom the decision was not unanimous. Not one but two of the members of the ELTE Doctoral Council voted against the application for his doctorate due to “a moral conflict of interest,” and one abstained.
One of them decided to post about his objections on Facebook. Gábor Polyák, head of the Department of Media and Communication, who did not mince words in his attack on Balázs Orbán, going directly after the Viktor Orbán-led government he works for.
“The government wipes its dirty feet on ELTE every day. Every single day, it swipes at it towards the abyss and laughs as we cling on, lest we fall off. It humiliates the student body, it humiliates every faculty member and every staff member,” his post reads. .
“And the Faculty of Law, where the rule of law, human rights and the separation of powers are supposed to be discussed, doesn’t tell Balázs Orbán that you should go to the NKE (National University of Public Service). Balázs Orbán, the lord of the lowest ideological incubator MCC, the all-powerful commander of the NKE, the apple of his grand chief’s eye, who can read ’56 out of history with impunity,“ the post continues.
“Colleagues, where is your spine? What kind of legal ethos is this, what kind of civic conduct? Why do we hold up the darkest past as an example to the intellectuals of the future? Why are we throwing up on our own faces?” Polyák further asks, adding that the government, including Balázs Orbán, has “hijacked our country, taken away our children’s future, made us a laughing stock in the European and international scientific space.”
In short, Polyák is clearly not a fan of Viktor Orbán or Balázs Orbán.
ELTE soon after distanced itself from Polyák’s post, stating that the university “considers it an inseparable part of the freedom of science to judge scientific works and scientific achievements solely on the basis of their quality and not on the basis of the author’s personality. ELTE also adheres to the institutional principle that university citizens with different thoughts, religions, political, and ideological beliefs form an independent professional community in which there is no room for exclusion. ELTE disassociates itself from any expression that qualifies the professional work of the citizens of Eötvös Loránd University based on their political views and involvement in public life, or questions anyone’s right to study or research at our university on political grounds.”
So who is Gábor Polyák, anyway? Well, he leads up the Soros-funded Mérték Media Analysis Workshop. And who are they? They helped decide which media outlets should receive money in last year’s competition by U.S. Ambassador David Pressman, whereby American tax dollars to the tune of HUF 115 million (nearly $300,000) were handed over to left-liberal portals including 444.hu and Telex.
Other parties who assisted Pressman included Zoltán Fleck, a sociologist and lawyer, known for suggesting before the last parliamentary elections that the rule of law should be suspended to alter the constitution if the opposition won because there was no democracy in Hungary anyway. Then, there was also Miklós Haraszti, the founder of the SZDSZ, who compared the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty to the organizations of Hungary’s previous communist dictatorship.
Even the former SZDSZ member Péter Hack, also a head of ELTE faculty, said the votes against Balázs Orbán were Bolshevik in nature: “This was also the communist practice; they wanted to take over the power in science, too, and prevented universities from granting academic degrees.”
Origo stated in its reporting of the connection that “there is no need to be surprised that the political attack launched by Polyák against Balázs Orbán’s doctorate is kept on the agenda by the left-wing press operating with American funds.”
Meanwhile, Origo’s Demeter Szilárd called Mr. Polyák “a militant activist, not a representative of science,” before calling attention to a 444 article stating that, according to the three parties who opposed/abstained Balázs Orbán’s work, it was “in order from a professional point of view, but there were problems with it in principle.” The portal cites “a moral conflict of interest” for those opposed to it, claiming that ELTE is “vulnerable to such a powerful politician” and is not able to judge his work “objectively” out of fear of sanctions.
So, in the name of attacking Orbán, the American ambassador, who happily gives out money to ensure freedom of the press, is also most likely happy that at least someone at ELTE saw fit to attempt to withhold a degree over differences in political ideology.
As Mandiner reported: “The liberal university lecturer who would ban right-wingers from the university is sharing the money allocated by the American embassy to the liberal press. The liberal media outlets that defend Polyák’s unacceptable statements and attack the procedure related to Balázs Orbán’s doctorate also received support from these funds.”
