Hungary’s Orban and government censorship of the academy
Hungary’s Viktor Orban is continually referred to as “far right.” And perhaps he is. For example, I saw this article describing how Orban has decided to ban gender studies programs in the two universities in Hungary that have offered them in the first place. The headline is quite alarming (and I read similar ones elsewhere): “Viktor Orban moves to ban gender studies courses at university in ‘dangerous precedent’ for Hungary.”
What Prime Minister does such a thing, except one who is bent on stifling civil liberties and on a path to tyranny? Even the teaching of the often-useless and always-leftist topic of gender studies should be the school’s decision, not the government’s.
But a little bell went off in my head, sounding a note of doubt. Is this really what Orban had proposed? Or was it something milder than a ban?
So I turned to the body of the article. It did seem as though they were indeed talking about a ban [emphasis mine]:
A proposal by the Hungarian government to ban gender studies at universities in the country has been criticised as a “dangerous precedent” for state interference.
Hungary’s ministry for human capacities said the proposed ban, which would come into effect at the start of the 2019 academic year, had been introduced because employers showed no interest in graduates from the subject.
But critics say the ban is part of a campaign by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to attack NGOs or institutions that oppose his Fidesz party’s socially conservative narrative.
Andrea Peto, a gender studies professor at the Central European University, one of the two universities that could be affected, said the proposed ban violated the Hungarian constitution, which protects the freedom of scientific research and learning.
And the reason for the ban sure sounds odd, doesn’t it? If employers aren’t interested, why not stand back and let the market take care of it?
I read the entire article and it was quite consistent in describing the proposed action as a “ban.” But that little bell of doubt kept going off in my mind, and so I kept looking. And then I found this, which told a slightly different story [emphasis mine]:
Hungary’s government will stop financing gender studies university courses, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said on Tuesday, marking one of the first concrete steps in a cultural shift signaled last month…
Gender studies courses are taught at the state-run university ELTE and Central European University, which are among the top universities in Hungary.
Gulyas said those already enrolled could finish their studies but Budapest would stop financing the courses from the next academic year.
Ah. So we learn two things from this article. The first is that it’s not a ban, it’s a defunding. The second is that one of the two universities in Hungary that even offer gender studies in the first place is run by the state. So why should the state pay for something it considers counterproductive and worthless?
I’m actually not the least bit in favor of governments banning areas of coursework. But withdrawing funds is a different thing, although if the state university is the only school that teaches a certain course, then withdrawing funds has the effect of eliminating it. However, if someone or some group wants to start a private college and offer it, providing their own funding, they are still free to do so.
Or so it would seem. After reading about six articles on this and trying to decipher what might actually be happening,I gave up because the truth was remarkably elusive.
It does indeed appear, however, as though a sort of reverse cultural revolution might be taking place in Hungary, a campaign by Orban’s party to restore the older ways and stamp out some of the leftist/progressive cultural agenda:
The most recent cultural target of the pro-Orban press is a Budapest exhibition of the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which was denounced in an article headlined: “This is the way communism is promoted using state money.” Kahlo was a member of the Mexican Communist Party and had an affair with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
In June, the Hungarian state opera scrapped several performances of the ballet musical Billy Elliot after the same right-wing newspaper called it “gay propaganda”.
Szilvester Okovacs, the opera’s general director, insisted that commercial rather than political pressures were behind the decision. This week, he announced that the theme for the opera’s 2019-2020 season would be “Christianity”.
Orban wants the Granscian march to go in the other direction for a change. And (as I wrote recently), Europe has a much weaker tradition of “liberal capitalism—the Enlightenment, Locke and the rest” than the US does. So it would be no surprise if Orban had instituted a ban, and started more heavy-handed direction of the country’s cultural life, although it’s not at all clear that those moves are occurring right now.
It’s perfectly legitimate for legislatures to define the institutional mission of public universities. And that would include a glossary incorporated into statutory law which defines the quantum of study time in each sort of degree, establishes permissible nomenclature for subject degrees, and provides capsule descriptions of such degrees. What the market doesn’t take care of is status competition and institutional politics among academics. It also cannot confer respectability. Keep in mind that ‘women’s studies’ is omnipresent on American campuses in spite of the fact that students have no interest in it. We award 1.8 million baccalaureate degrees each year in this country, but fewer than 1,500 are in women’s studies. Other victimology programs fare less well. It’s all about taking other peoples money and doling out resources to privileged political interests. Academics fancy they have a right to do that. The law needs to stomp and stomp hard.
As for private institutions, remove subsidies and add consumer protection law.
Yeah, there’s no ban, merely a decision to stop offering something that has no value and attracts next to no customers.
The only reason it was on offer at all was to draw the subsidies, and I seriously doubt the courses would even be economically viable to offer for the universities without those subsidies.
While I’m all for subsidising things like fundamental research into STEM fields, and preserving classical art forms, gender studies are neither, as Orban knows quite well.
And I’d in this case even favour an outright ban, as gender studies is nothing more or less than a training ground for subversives intent on overthrowing the culture and society they operate in in favour of communist, anti-democratic, autharitarian, one party states, a system with which Hungary has decades of very painful experience.
These “gender studies” people are no different from KGB moles planted into western society in the 1970s and ’80s to control the “peace movement”, and later including the “green movement”, both of which were always nothing more than operations aimed at destabilising and militarilly and economically weakening western society in preparation for a communist takeover.
Anyone who resists or opposes Islam is immediately called “Far Right” by the Leftist press. This began with Pim Fortuyn in Holland (who was then murdered) and has continued, without exception, to Tommy Robinson in England today.
As I recall, gender/race studies were established in American schools as part of the payoff to stop protesting leftist groups from taking over the college president’s office on a regular basis.
Gulyas said those already enrolled could finish their studies but Budapest would stop financing the courses from the next academic year.
“Gulyas” rang a bell with me. Goulash? Wiki:Gulyás.
Yup. Hungarians in my home area, and also knew Hungarian Iron Curtain refugees in Latin America.
As goulash was a Hungarian cowboy dish, perhaps it could also be called Hungarian Chili.
This is a common problem in Europe. There’s no serious alternative media like, let’s say, unz.com, and that makes finding the truth far more difficult.
Besides that, internet is more controlled. In Germany or Sweden people have been arrested for posting comments against massive immigration. In general, people are far more careful in Europe than they are in US. You can find the truth, or at least get close enough to it, but it takes more time and effort.
When it comes to eastern Europe, I’d recommend to give a try to the Russian search site, yandex.com. It’s not a bad engine at all, and it’s far less censored than google.
I’ve found this:
https://thehungaryjournal.com/2018/08/10/orban-govt-abolishes-gender-studies-in-hungary/
And from this sentence “HVG.hu notes that CEU offers both Hungarian and American degrees, the amendment will not affect the latter” it seems that Orban has eliminated the degree. That doesn’t mean gender studies is prohibited. It means that there’s no “gender studies” degree granted by the Hungarian government anymore. That includes private universities too (in Europe, quite often, and no matter the university is private, the title is still granted by the government).
However, private degrees and foreign degrees are not affected.
Gender studies: male and masculine, female and feminine, and transgendered. Gendered attributes including sexual orientation, have been distorted to progress a social narrative. #TooManyLabels
Sexual education has deprecated teaching biology, self-moderation, and personal responsibility.
Diversity has normalized color judgments (e.g. Jew privilege) and denies individual dignity.
Selective-child (i.e. denying life deemed unworthy) denies human evolution and women’s franchise (i.e. Pro-Choice is two choices too late).
Oh, and renewed interest in socialism, too. Still, there is a left-right nexus. Americans are social, economically, and logically in the middle. Progressives and liberal to the left. Libertarians and anarchists to the right.
The market isn’t really helping the US clear out useless degrees.
“After reading about six articles on this and trying to decipher what might actually be happening,I gave up because the truth was remarkably elusive.”
The only reason why the truth is elusive is because Western Europe’s mass media is only interested in subjective truths that advance the narrative. Any truth counter to the narrative is ignored and repressed. Post modernism rejects the concept of objective truth, stating that all truth is subjective. That assertion allows advocates of postmodernism to reject subjective truth (that’s your opinion) with which they disagree.
In order to believe that claptrap one must reject reality. Objective truth is easily proven but very few advocates of post modernism possess the courage to test their suppositions.
This couple did test it with predictable results; “American couple that believed “evil is a make-believe concept” murdered by ISIS in Tajikistan”
Neo,
In the post above and now this one I’m getting a message “405 – not allowed”
So I hit the back button and hit the post comment link and it goes through but no preview or edit function available. Using chrome.
I applaud Hungary’s decision, even if their stated reason is bullshit.
The true purpose of gender studies (indeed, all grievance studies) programs is to sow Marxist social agitation. As far as slippery slopes go, I’ve long been a believer that some things shouldn’t be tolerated. It is the pretense of having an open mind that leads to all sorts of mischief.
It’s “Gramscian” after Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist.
Sorry.
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the “common sense” values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
to sow Marxist social agitation.
People need to stop yapping about Marxism. It’s not influential in the American academy.
Hungary was in on a lot of the games played and do not want the stuff they helped with to blow back and do to them what its done elsewhere… they like other satellites have resisted what was promoted elsewhere and normalized
those who refuse to learn from other nations history…
a kind of variation on the more basic theme of the original…
People need to stop yapping about Marxism. It’s not influential in the American academy.
The entirety of the grievance studies programs are built upon a backbone of Communism. This is why you see so many Antifa people with the hammer and sickle.
The only difference is, they replaced “class” with “gender” and “race.”
This also explains their fetish for power and power relationships.
Great post, Neo. I appreciate it on many levels.
First, the problems you encountered in your efforts to discern a fact from news articles. Rotten media. The darn media lies so much and sometimes just produces sloppy, lazy work. Even when not agenda politics. My brother was a diver with the state troopers and once, a high profile case, the media questioned him. He told me that every single factual detail he gave them they got wrong. Height of the bridge, depth of the water and so on. Media, a necessary but untrustworthy apparatus.
Second, well, I am insanely over the moon crazy about Orban, so there is that.
Third, that your piece showed me that Hungary is not only using common sense in their refugee policy, but that the country is proceeding apace with the Gramscian march through the institutions albeit in reverse. Heh. That I like.
The entirety of the grievance studies programs are built upon a backbone of Communism.
They have nothing to do with Marxism, bar that the sort of bourgeois personality which might have been attracted to Marxism in 1948 or 1968 is now invested in truculent identity politics.
The left constantly uses phrases like “deny access” and “ban”, when the reality is that the someone’s benefits is not being paid for by someone else. I’m not denying you anything when I refuse to provide it.
On the other hand, if you’re a collectivist ideology where everything (as the Santa Barbara councilman said recently) is under the control of the state, then, yes, not funding your things is equivalent to denying you something.
These “studies” are about bringing down capitalism and replacing it with … guess what?
As a recent conference asked, “can there be capitalism without racism”. It all comes back to an indictment of capitalism, in the end, just one more weapon in their panoply.
As for Hungary, if there are two universities that offer a gender studies major and one of them stops and the other one is prevented from granting degrees in Hungary altogether, then this degree will no longer be offered in Hungary. Who is going to risk the government’s anger in the future to offer an unapproved degree, at the risk of being shut down. More generally, there is no other private university of CEU’s caliber in Hungary (and maybe in all of Eastern Europe). If it’s closed then the government will have a monopoly on serious higher education (I think). No laws will be needed, administrative decisions will suffice.
“Studies” degrees are poisonous nonsense, but the precedent being set now can be used in many different ways. Is this a needed correction or only a first step? Can book burnings and degenerate art burnings be far behind? Orban is, hopefully, smarter than that, but who knows if he is smart enough.
All you need to know about gender studies is…
Men have penises
Women have vaginas
Anything else, then that person needs psychological treatment for mental health issues!!!
Oh do not forget the hermaphrodite, rare as unicorns though??