4th of April, 2017
The Right Honourable The Minister of Human Capacities, Zoltán Balog
1054 Budapest, Akadémia utca 3
Hungary
Sir,
As members of the LOGOS Research Group, who have successfully collaborated with faculty of the Central European University in the context of a joint European research project, we are writing to express our solidarity with CEU and to express concern at the new legislation, proposed by your Government, that will negatively affect the status, and impede the operations, of CEU as one of Hungary’s internationally most renowned centres of excellence in research and higher education.
In our humble opinion, the proposed legislative changes would prove extremely counterproductive and would do Hungarian academia a disservice of lasting negative impact, as they would cripple CEU’s continued efforts to promote top-level research in Hungary, to ensure the visibility of its results at an international level, to invest in higher education of the first order, and foster extant, and establish novel, collaborations with institutions from Europe and other countries around the globe.
We respectfully urge the government to withdraw the proposed legislation and to enter consultation with CEU, bearing in mind the damage this legislation threatens to do to Hungary’s international academic reputation, to its relationships with its European partners and other countries.
Yours sincerely,
Sven Rosenkranz
Coordinator
LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy
Universitat de Barcelona
Spain
http://www.ub.edu/grc_logos/
CC: Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary; Office of the Prime Minister; Central European University