Academic freedom in Hungary
By: V-Dem Staff
Apr 18, 2017
The new law that the Prime Minister Victor Orban is pushing in the parliament is believed to target the funding of the Central European University (CEU), to a large extent supported by funds from the United States. The proposed legislation has mobilized citizens to demonstrate for academic freedom. This week´s graph looks at the development of academic freedom in Hungary as compared to some of its neighboring countries.
The Freedom of Academic and Cultural Expression indicator measures to what extent freedom of academic and cultural expression related to political issues is respected by public authorities. Lower values indicate that academic freedom is weakly or not respected by public authorities and censorship or intimidation is frequent, while the highest value indicates that academic freedom is fully respected by public authorities. We can see that in Hungary, as well as in other former Warsaw Pact countries, the degree of freedom of academic and cultural expression exploded after 1989. It has remained stable since, with the only exception of Hungary where we can see a significant reduction in recent years, coinciding with Prime Minister Viktor Orban´s cabinet. Data on the development in Hungary since 2012 will be available with the V-Dem version 7 data release happening within the upcoming weeks.
If you want to know more about the Freedom of Academic and Cultural Expression Indicator across the globe, use the online tool on v-dem.net.
