Dear Professor László Lovász, the President
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
Let me express my full support of your efforts to preserve the
autonomy of research within the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which has
enjoyed great international recognition because of its excellent scholarship
and top-ranking publications. The right of the community of scientists
to define their research priorities, devise or improve their methods
with regard to transnational state-of-the-art, and address issues that
they identify as relevant to their natural and social environment is a
sine qua non of what we call the European spirit. If the Hungarian
government really wants to figure as a defender of European identity and
is in fact interested in the international prestige of Hungarian nation,
it should abolish the proposed reform shortsightedly intended to subject
its national scholarly community to short-term interests of the ruling
party.
With kindest regards,
Professor Marko Juvan, Member of the Academia Europaea
Head of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and
Literary
Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia