Explosive dispute over a PhD

Balázs Orbán wants to defend his dissertation on national sovereignty at the ELTE in early December. As the news portal index.hu wrote, only five out of eight professors on the relevant committee had agreed to the defence. Unanimous resolutions are the norm.

The real scandal, however, was caused by the head of the ELTE Chair of Media and Communication. Prof. Gábor Polyák finds it shameful that a high-ranking representative of the government, which disrespects the university on a daily basis, dared to come to ELTE to defend his PhD. ‘No matter how much (Culture Minister) Balázs Hankó and his gang lie, ELTE – the most underfunded university in Europe – is still one of the best Hungarian universities in all international rankings,’ Polyák wrote on social media. As a university lecturer, he resents the fact that Balázs Orbán of all people, whom he dubbed the ‘master of the ideology-driven Mathias Corvinus Collegium’, wants to adorn himself with a PhD title from ELTE.

The ELTE responded to this ‘open letter’ with a reference to academic freedom. There can be no exclusion, especially not on a political-ideological basis. Such statements damage the university’s high reputation, even if the authors only want to express their private opinion. Academic achievements should be judged solely on the basis of their academic quality and not on the basis of the author’s personality.