New guest professor forced to leave Hungary by illiberal policies

The award-winning professor, Andrea Pető, was hounded out of Hungary along with colleagues and students at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. She relocated together with her university’s new campus to Vienna in 2020, moving from one EU member country to another. She is now the City of Malmö Guest professor, based at Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM).

I received death threats and hate mail, which the Hungarian police did not investigate ...

Andrea Pető

She is one of tens of thousands of academic refugees who have fled to Europe as crises and illiberal politicians are hijacking science for their political aims within the continent, on its border, and globally.

“I received death threats and hate mail, which the Hungarian police did not investigate, stating that as a person who is out in the public eye, I should have to endure these different opinions – I don’t think emails stating they want me dead is freedom of expression,” says Pető, who as a result of the online harassment was offered a body guard by the CEU.

For the past 15 years she has been researching illiberal political forces to understand what plans they have, especially in the field of higher education and culture.

“I was interested in how this new surge of highly skilled immigration changes the European higher education infrastructure, and how it changes the way certain subjects are being taught or researched,” said Pető.

“Never before had the European continent faced such a wave of refugee academics and scholars: from Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and from the Middle East. I consider myself a refugee scholar, I didn’t leave because I wanted to, I had to leave because of what I am researching,” said Pető, a professor of gender studies.

She believes that this influx of academic refugees is trying to establish themselves in a difficult situation in Europe, because the European higher education system has got within itself several structural problems.

“Higher education has transformed into an entrepreneurial enterprise; therefore, the idea that faculty has stable employment, tenure and a pension has been slowly dismantled. At first this was by neo liberalisation and now, on the ruins that were created, by illiberal forces. These scholars arriving are looking for a European higher education system which used to exist back in the 1980s.”

Refugee scholars are offered short-term contracts which can lead to disappointed and bitterness as they do not find a supportive infrastructure. “This, together with a lack of innovative response to the unprecedented intellectual and personal crises might be misinterpreted as a crisis of liberal values.”

Pető left Budapest together with approximately 340 colleagues and 1,200 students I; the CEU campus in Budapest now hosts the research unit, CEU Democracy Institute, where Peto is a research fellow.

“CEU was founded in Budapest in 1991, and we were already labelled in the press as “termites eating the roots of the Hungarian nation”. Since then, the victory of the illiberal government, led by Viktor Orbán in 2010, captured the state, and step by step dismantled all the checks and balances and occupied every important space.”

Despite of this “heartbreaking” trauma, as Pető describes it, she remains positive and optimistic:

“For me, personally, I think political emigration from one European Union members country to another is a gift; it’s a fantastic opportunity and responsibility, a once in a lifetime opportunity to live history – we are all making history now, with all its consequences.”