Students Blockade College as Hungary Boosts State Sway Over Arts

(Bloomberg) -- Students blockaded a college in Budapest as tensions flare over state encroachment into culture, media and education.

The action Tuesday followed a demonstration by prominent Hungarian actors and directors the previous evening at the University of Theater and Film Arts, which like other institutions has fallen under the control of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s allies. Students erected tents vowing not to let the new pro-government leadership enter.

Orban, an anti-immigrant firebrand who’s already in hot water with the European Union over meddling in the judiciary and the media, has more recently turned his attention to boosting the state’s sway over academia and the arts. Appointees to the theater school’s new board include an actor and a director loyal to the premier, as well as executives from oil refiner Mol Nyrt. with no obvious qualifications for their roles.

“We know they’re very closely linked to the prime minister’s circles,” Mate Gaspar, a head of one of the university’s institutes who resigned in protest, said last month in an interview. The clash over education “has reached the university and it will have very concrete consequences.”

New board head Attila Vidnyanszky, who’s currently in charge of the National Theater in Budapest and who’s received several state awards, says the leadership changes are designed to improve teaching, and that funding for a new campus may be in the offing. He denies claims that he failed to consult with staff and students, the state-run MTI news service reported.

Speaking Out

Alumni and staff remain unconvinced. Andras Kecza, a movie director who studied there in the 1980s, said there was more room for self-expression at the university under communism than there may be in the future.

“This freedom is now totally under threat,” he said Monday at the rally. “We mustn’t remain quiet.”

Orban’s quest to fix what he calls a liberal bias in the media and culture has included a campaign against George Soros’s Central European University, which ended up moving its main campus to Vienna. The government took control of other schools through complex financing structures.

“Ours isn’t the first university to be handed over to a foundation,” said Janka Veszelovszki, a fifth-year acting student and one of the demonstration’s organizers. “We’re the first to rebel against it.”

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