The recent actions taken by the Hungarian government under the disputed Emergency Rule has received worldwide attention, with influential international media outlets approaching CEU leadership and faculty for expert commentary and insights. The Times and Der Standard quoted CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff, CNN and BBC Mundo interviewed him on the same topic. The Times also asked CPS Researcher Peter Rado for expert commentary; while The Atlantic quoted CELAB Researcher Petra Bard, and The Journal of International Politics and Society spoke with Professor Andras Bozoki from the Department of Political Science. In a news article that's garnered lots of online interest, Bloomberg asked the Head of CEU’s Legal Department, Professor Renata Uitz for comment on the topic, as did Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Professor Uitz also published an overview on Euronews on why the EU needs to stop funding the mentioned rule.
With the Covid 19 impact felt across all segments of society and all sectors of the economy, CEU faculty have also been making direct contributions to the body of knowledge being produced by researchers around the virus. This work greatly expands our understanding around the current epidemic. Associate Professor of the Department of Economics and Business Maciej Kisilowski shared his views on how democracies can beat the pandemic in Project Syndicate; and Pro-Rector Eva Fodor gave an interview to Science and Business on CEU’s switch to online teaching.
An article published in Croatian weekly Novosti by CMDS Outreach Coordinator Robert Nemeth looks at how COVID-19 threatens media freedom. The piece is also available in English and you can see here a video from our CMDS colleagues summarizing the threat. Assistant Professor at SPP Cameran Ashraf also writes on the same topic in Forbidden Stories. CEU alumn Markos Kounalakis explains in Medium about how the coronavirus crisis is the perfect time to throw democracy under the bus in Hungary; as do CEU alumni Lisette Reuvers and Jan Jacob Vogelaar in the Dutch paper de Volkskrant.
Hungarian media has also covered CEU research insights: CPS Researcher Peter Rado is interviewed by hvg.hu about the impact of the coronavirus on the Hungarian education system; while Visiting Professor at the Department of Network and Data Science Albert-Laszlo Barabasi features in Hungarian language Transylvanian news site transindex.ro. Defacto, an Index blog written by faculty from the Department of Economics and Business Miklos Koren, Peter Kondor, Robert Lieli, Adam Szeidl and Adam Zawadowski offers an analysis of current virus-related topics. Professor at the Department of Political Science Laszlo Bruszt drew attention to the effect of the Emergency Rule on the employment law on news site 444.hu. PhD candidate Zsolt Kapelner looks at ethical dilemmas of the pandemic in quibit.hu, and on the same site you can also find several articles by researcher David Mihalyi.
