Using EU citizenship to protect academic freedom: an alternative method

Ziegler, Tamas Dezso

doi:10.4337/9781788972901.00018

Cited by 2 publications

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“…This does not mean that Hungarian scholars are not oppressed, as this oppression has been well‐documented (Ryder 2022; Ziegler 2019, 2022). However, it is a very sad and not very productive scientific position to put all your knowledge into writing books and articles about you being the victim of oppression.…”

Section: Eastern European Scholars' Self‐colonization: a Hungarian Pe...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Eurowhiteness in Science: Privilege Escalation and Intentional Sludge

Ziegler

Unger

2023

Sociological Forum

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This article connects Böröcz's (2021) Eurowhiteness concept with a critical dissection of Western European academia's stance on ‘outsiders’, including Eastern Europeans and non‐Europeans. It explains how an exclusivist Western science is created, where, behind the seemingly open and diverse environment, we find monolithic privileges helping participants inside and blocking participation from the outside. The article claims that in the present Western European academic setting, there are two tendencies that seriously harm diversity and the free flow of ideas. First, Western scholarly communities boost their potential through structural advantage. In this environment, scientific excellence becomes a form of privilege. However, it does not necessarily mean proper excellence, but more an exclusionary system of greater financial assets, personal connections, and shared knowhow among the participants, as well as access to gatekeepers. Second, the article uses Cass R. Sunstein's theory on sludge in public management to explain how the European Union boosts this phenomenon with its inequitable ways of allocating research funding: this is how privilege escalation is created through a pseudo‐meritocratic system. Finally, the article explains how Eastern European scholars adhered to these requirements with a self‐colonizing attitude, which limits their long‐term capability to carry out original science.

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Section: Eastern European Scholars' Self‐colonization: a Hungarian Pe...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Eurowhiteness in Science: Privilege Escalation and Intentional Sludge

Ziegler

Unger

2023

Sociological Forum

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Authoritarian governance of academia in Central and Eastern Europe: Chances of a European counter-culture

Ziegler

2024

Glob. Con.

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This article highlights the challenges of external reactions to authoritarian higher education governance in certain Central and Eastern European countries, especially Hungary and Poland. It interprets the political change in these countries as an authoritarian cultural backlash, which is not just a legal or political problem, but a kind of post-fascist cultural revolution contesting the liberal script. First, the article explains the framework of authoritarian policing in academia based on the more general works of Bob Altemeyer and Zeev Sternhell. Second, it tries to answer the question: What tools could counter these tendencies from the perspective of the European Union? As the article interprets the rise of authoritarianism as a phenomenon rooted in the cultural deficit of the countries concerned, it argues that a programme for a democratic and pluralist cultural counter-revolution should be implemented. However, no nation can be democratized solely by external actors, and the basics of democratic thinking should be developed from the grassroots level. If the crisis in academia is rooted in a value-crisis within the societies concerned, then measures countering this phenomenon should also include promoting Enlightened pluralism at all levels of these societies.

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Using EU citizenship to protect academic freedom: an alternative method

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Eurowhiteness in Science: Privilege Escalation and Intentional Sludge

Eurowhiteness in Science: Privilege Escalation and Intentional Sludge

Authoritarian governance of academia in Central and Eastern Europe: Chances of a European counter-culture

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