Tibor Fischer can describe the current state of democracy in Hungary any way he wishes, but he should not be allowed to get away with the assertion that the Central European University has failed to “comply with the law” (I just don’t recognise Orbán as a tyrant, 21 April). For 25 years CEU has worked cooperatively with Hungarian authorities on every issue involving our work here. Our compliance with Hungarian accreditation procedures has been repeatedly confirmed by Hungarian officials and civil servants in the ministries concerned.

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We have never sought special “privileges” that set us apart from the rest of Hungarian academic life. On the contrary, in our fight to defend our academic freedom, many Hungarian institutions, including the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, have given us their public support.

Fischer alleges that there is something irregular about offering American degrees in Hungary if CEU doesn’t have a campus in the United States. In fact, CEU is one of more than two dozen American institutions that are authorised to offer American degrees overseas without operating a campus in the US. Mr Fischer is entitled to his opinions, but not to misstating the facts.

Michael Ignatieff

President, Central European University

• Tibor Fischer is correct that media discussion of the Fidesz regime in Hungary would be better informed if more people spoke Hungarian. For readers who do not, I would suggest Éva Balogh’s Hungarian Spectrum blog, and Kim Lane Scheppele’s forensic analyses of Viktor Orbán’s “constitutional coup” in the academic literature, and her account of changes introduced to electoral rules to facilitate his re-election in her contribution to Paul Krugman’s blog in the New York Times.

For a Hungarian opposition perspective, two recent publications by Bálint Magyar are of interest: his Post-Communist Mafia State and Twenty-Five Sides of a Post-Communist Mafia State, a collection of essays coedited with Júlia Vásárhelyi (both CEU Press). The government perspective on the “mafia state”, however, is that creating a national bourgeoisie to counterbalance the power of multinationals, Brussels and George Soros is more important than corruption.

Fischer is also correct that there is plenty of critical discussion on TV and radio in Budapest, but opposition platforms keep disappearing, opposition TV and radio is harder to access the further one is from Budapest, and, increasingly, effective opposition comes from Jobbik on the right rather than from parties committed to liberalism or social democracy.

Antisemitism in Fidesz Hungary is heavily coded. To appreciate it fully, you not only have to speak Hungarian but be familiar with Hungarian history: which dates are celebrated, which interwar politicians resurrected as national heroes.

Nigel Swain

University of Liverpool

I just don’t recognise Viktor Orbán as a ‘tyrant’ | Tibor Fischer Read more

• As a keen reader of his novels, I was disappointed with Tibor Fischer’s article. I disagree to varying degrees with all points he raises.

Let me pick out his final point on the so-called Lex CEU, which repeats the government line faithfully, and makes no sense. As both the Hungarian educational authorities and CEU have stated repeatedly, CEU previously fulfilled all Hungarian legal requirements. To my knowledge, the “irregularities” that were now supposedly found were never specified. Fischer mentions “sloppy paperwork”; I would like to see his source. If it were but a matter of 27 of 28 foreign universities in Hungary complying with existing legislation, there would be no reason to rush a bill through parliament in an emergency procedure.

This new law makes new requirements, such as the operation of a campus in the country of origin, that would effectively make it impossible for CEU to operate in Hungary. This is what the protests are about (Report, 13 April).

This not only an issue of CEU. What is at stake is the Hungarian government’s power to push out an influential university because it doesn’t adhere to its political ideology. And that’s both an issue of academic freedom and of plurality of opinions, ie democracy.

Dr Felix Jeschke

Prague, Czech Republic

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• To claim that Orbán isn’t an enemy of democracy omits his assault on civil society. Orbán intends “to extrude” critical NGOs in 2017 and target their foreign funding. Fischer says people living west of Vienna don’t understand what’s happening in Hungary, but tens of thousands of people who rallied in Budapest against the closure of the CEU certainly do, and see the attack on the university for what it is: an attempt to shut down academic freedom and critical thinking.

Fischer says Orbán’s illiberal democracy is still a democracy because it has elections. But European freedoms are about much more than holding regular votes – they also require encouraging robust and critical civil society institutions, not smothering them. International human rights organisations know how to spot an authoritarian regime in the making. Orbán and his apologists can call what’s happening in Hungary what they like, but if it looks and swims and quacks like a government undermining democracy, it probably is.

Brian Dooley

Senior adviser, Human Rights First

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