April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

the CEU Weekly

An independent newspaper by CEU students and alumni

Student Tip # 75 Join The CEU Weekly's Anniversary Toast and celebrate with us with some drink and cake! (The event will take place on Thursday, April 11, between 6 pm and 7:30 pm in room 002 of Nádor 13.)

Hungarian Expression of the Week

Phrase: Jó annak, aki szereti.

Translation: Good for those, who like it.

Meaning: this saying refers to things that the speaker really dislikes.

FREE LUNCH!!! PAGE 8

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEU WEEKLY! PAGE 5 MEET THE CEU WEEKLY TEAM PAGE 5 Why Did We Start The CEU Weekly? PAGE 6

Everything is Fine PAGE 6

The CEU Weekly Interview with the President and Rector of CEU, JOHN SHATTUCK

In this exclusive interview with Rodrigo Avila B., the Rector answered questions about himself, his childhood and youth. The Rector re-called his early experiences as an exchange student in Damascus, Syria, and the lesson thought to him by his father during the crisis of

civil liberties that the US experienced in the 1950s. From his policy maker experience and civil rights lawyer perspective, he recol-lected his involvement in the Balkans and his journey as international envoy to Bos-

nia. Also, John Shattuck discussed the US

foreign policy, and reflected on the cur-rent tensions in the US domestic politics, acknowledging that “open society is fac-ing a major contest around the world, including in the United States”. In the final part of the interview, the Rec-tor talks about CEU as a laboratory for critical thinking and for the analysis and understanding of an open society.

PAGES 2,3 & 4

HUNGARY NEWS

Follow Up: What is New in the Sirály Story? The experiences of two CEU students.

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Leading the Dead” – The World of János Major” An Exhibition by a CEU Alumnus

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the CEU Weekly

INTERVIEW April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

The CEU Weekly Interview with the President and Rector of CEU, JOHN SHATTUCK

John Shattuck, CEU‟s fourth President and Rector is an internationally recog-nized human rights lawyer who has oc-cupied several distinguished positions. He started his career in the American Civil Liberties Union and was Vice Pres-ident of Harvard University from 1984 until 1993, when he became Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Hu-man Rights and Labor (1993-98) under president Clinton. In this capacity, he was closely involved in restoring a democratic government in Haiti and played an active role in establishing an International Tribunal for Rwanda and the ex-Yugoslavia; he was also a key actor in the negotiations of the Dayton agreement that somehow brought peace to Bosnia. Later on he was ap-pointed as US ambassador to the Czech Republic, and currently serves as

fourth President and Rector of CEU.

RODRIGO AVILA B: How does the John Shattuck of today resembles the John Shattuck that you imagined when you were a child? If you could live again, is there something that you would different-ly? JOHN SHATTUCK: Well, when I was a child I always imagined or hoped that I would get see the world. I imagined that the world was a really big place and until I was about sixteen I never traveled any-where beyond about three or four hundred miles from my house. The world seemed out there but it wasn‟t something that I had yet discovered. And then, when I was a student, I was given the opportunity to become an exchange student, and the country in which I became an exchange student was Syria. Syria is in the news now; it‟s a tragedy what‟s happening in Syria, but one part of my high-school career was spent in Damas-cus. It was the first time I ever travelled away from my home. It was an amazing experience as you can imagine. I spoke pretty much only French when I was there. I didn‟t speak Arabic but I had to speak French, because the family I was living with spoke French. So I began to think, and this was in a period when JFK was the presi-dent of the United States, which is a long time ago of course, but he was really in-spiring for young people like myself. So the

decision that I made at that time was that I wanted to really have a role in the world in some way, travelling and seeing it. Earlier, when I was even younger I was giv-en a lesson about the world by my father. My father was a lawyer and during the time I was a very small boy there was a crisis of civil liberties in the United States. People were accused of being communists loosely. They were just charged this way because there was a fear of communism during the Cold War. My father found that a woman that was running for the board of the school in our small town had been ac-cused of being a communist with no evi-dence whatsoever. So he got quite con-cerned about that and started offering to defend her in public settings. And pretty soon I‟ve found that he was being in some way accused of being a communist. He wasn‟t! He was a very conservative man in many ways, but deeply concerned about civil liberties. So I asked him: What‟s going on here? I was about eight years old. And he said: Look, people need to be treated fairly and we need to get to the bottom of the truth of every statement and fact that‟s been offered. And it had a very powerful impression on me. So these two experiences, one traveling as a high school student in Syria, and another being told by my father what human rights and civil liberties and truth were all about, really kind of gave me a sense of what I wanted to be. R.A.: After this synthetic but inspiring introduction about yourself, let me go to a topic that I have a particular interest for: the Balkans. You were one of the key ac-tors on the ground in Bosnia, collecting the information that provided evidence to Madeleine Albright, the US Ambassador to the UN, to raise awareness for the need of an international intervention in order to stop the killings. Could you please recreate this journey for us? J.S.: This was a terrible time in the middle of the catastrophe in the Balkans, that we now look back at it and we call it the Bal-kan Wars or the War in Bosnia, but it was a time when the worst genocide in Europe since the Second World War had just oc-curred. But nobody knew quite what had happened at that stage. At town called

Srebrenica, in the eastern part of Bosnia, had been taken over by Serb paramilitary and Bosnian-Serb forces, and the women and children had all been essentially lined up and taken into buses and send off to a refugee camp in a place called Tuzla. And the men were left behind and no one knew what really had happened to these men. I worked with the International Committee for the Red Cross from Washington when I was Assistant Secretary of State trying to see whether they had any information about where these men were, and they had some vague information that they were held in warehouses, and they were basical-ly made prisoners. Yet there were a few stories that began to come out that maybe something much worse had happened. So as the Assistant Secretary for Human

Rights I asked for the Secretary of State to approve a trip for me to take to the region and go to this refugee camp and start in-terviewing refugees and see if they had any information about what happened with the men that had been left behind. When I got there I got the names of several refu-gees to interview, who I was told might have information. This was on the airport tarmac, it was a hot July day, there were some firing still going on the hills around, so it was a very uncertain circumstance. I met these people, several of whom who told me extraordinary stories, several men actually who told me that they had been with these men in Srebrenica, they had gone in these warehouses, they had been lined up with other men and they had been shot with what turned up to be 7000 others.

>>> >>>

John Shattuck in Bosnia

INTERVIEW

>>> I was really the first person to have these in person interviews, and I recorded all the information and had it sent back by diplo-matic cable to Washington and to New York, to the UN where Madeleine Albright was. This was really the first evidence of what it actually happened. As it turned out there were mass graves in the area and 7000 men had been shot. All unarmed Bos-nian Muslims. This was really the most im-portant piece of evidence of what had ac-tually happened in the Town of Srebrenica. As a result, the decision was taken by the UN Security Council at the leadership of Ambassador Albright to authorize a NATO intervention to stop all this killing, an inter-vention largely by airpower at that time. From there on we went to Dayton peace accords which Richard Holbrooke, a larger than life diplomat who I had the pleasure working with, really led the effort to end the war, to end the killing. The war ended in November 1995, so about four months later. R.A.: Now I would like to ask you about what is currently happening there. You have spoken before about the forces of integration. Do you find the integration narrative to be still prominent? We know that Croatia will be joining the EU, but what do you foresee about the other re-publics in the region?

J.S.: I think that there is still a great deal of

frozen peace. There is peace, the warring

parties have been separated, but I‟m

afraid that the ethnic and religious divisions

have remained. In my own view it was un-

fortunate that the people who were most

responsible for these criminal acts were not

arrested right away and taken out of the

conflict area. Some of them ended up go-

ing into politics and it all ended up basical-

ly making this a frozen peace. I‟ve trav-

elled recently in Bosnia, and today there

are many people, young people, and hero-

ic young people, some of them CEU gradu-

ates who are working very hard to bring

peace to their countries and to enter poli-

tics. I think that the fact that Croatia is go-

ing into the EU is good. I think it is important

that at some point soon Serbia and Bosnia

also begin the process, and really get inte-

grated into the EU, because I think that‟s

where they belong.

R.A.: Now I would like to turn our discus-sion to US domestic politics. At a first glance the US politics seem to be today very polarized. Do you see any worri-some elements, or it is just a contempo-rary representation of the US pluralism? J.S.: Well, that‟s a very good question. I think open society is facing a major contest around the world, including in the United States. Certainly open and free speech is an important element of Open Society but so is democratic politics, that is to say the ability to solve problems peacefully in a regular political process. In many places that is more and more difficult, for a whole lot of complicated reasons including the proliferation of new media and instant communications, and the fact that political leaders have to react almost instantly to everything that takes place. There are very good developments in the sense that there is more participation, more engagement, particularly through media elements, but I think that given the economic crisis there is a lot of uncertainty and fear and insecurity, and that sometimes leads to insularity. I think we see that here in Hungary, we see that in Central Europe, and to some extent I think that the polarization of the politics in the US relates to this larger phenomenon.

I think that the election of Barack Obama

and particularly the coalition that re-

elected him to office last year in 2012 is a

demonstration that the United States is truly

a pluralist and diverse society. We are on

the verge of having a majority-minority

society; the majority of people in the US

are otherwise to be considered minorities.

In some ways this mirrors CEU, so I would

connect this with CEU. This is a very positive

development, but also diversity scares peo-

ple sometimes and makes them feel that

their own kind is under some attack. Right

now I think that we have in the politics of

the US a polarization which results from

some elements in the political system, par-

ticularly those who were labeled the Tea

Party or those who are against any kind of

government action for social benefits. These

groups are acting in part out of fear, and

out of their loss of status and standing in a

society that is becoming increasingly a ma-

jority-minority. But I am optimistic; I think

that the world is heading in a good direc-

tion, the United States are heading into a

good direction where more participation

and more diversity is ultimately going to

lead to new forms of open society, new

forms of democratic governance. We are in

a very transitional period of the world right

now, but it is an exciting period. And CEU is

intellectually and morally in the center of

all of that.

R.A.: There is a discussion going on about banning the use of drones and tar-geted killings without due process on American citizens. Given your civil rights lawyer perspective but also your policy making experience, what could be a solu-tion to this issue? J.S.: This is one of the most important issues for international security and for US foreign policy. The use of drones and mechanized warfare with little human intervention is probably inevitable, but it‟s disturbing and seductive because you can imagine as a president you don‟t really want to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops. President Obama is in the process of disengaging from Afghanistan and from Iraq. At the same time he makes use of these mecha-nized warfare machines. What is seductive about the drones is that you can operate them without the engagement of forces on the ground, and you can probably limit the amount of civilian damage that‟s done in a setting where you‟re doing counter terror-ism or where you‟re fighting a war. But, in a setting where they‟re completely unregulat-ed either by international law or domestic law, I worry that we‟re entering into a world that is really going to be lawless. And drones are certainly not going to be the sole purview of the United States. Other countries and even other shadowy forces of the world, including terrorists, might end up using them.

My own view is that there needs to be a

high degree of regulation brought to bear

on mechanized warfare, and I am glad to

see that there is now some debate begin-

ning in the United States, including within

the Administration itself as well as in the

congress about requiring a much more

elaborate system of checks and balances

against the use of these kinds of mecha-

nisms.

The final part of the interview, on Page 4

>>>

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

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the CEU Weekly

the CEU Weekly

INTERVIEW April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

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>>> There are some examples of regulation that have worked in the field of electronic surveillance, which has been a standard security tactic of all governments for a long time. United States, and I was involved in this when I was a lawyer for the Civil Liber-ties Union, enacted a statute in 1978 called the foreign intelligence surveillance act, and it required a court to oversee the intel-ligence wire taping that has been done by security agencies involving American citi-zens and requiring some kind of judicial warrant oversight, so it would not be simply the decision of a few bureaucrats or even the President alone. That‟s not a perfect solution either. The critics of that solution say that it‟s not really very effective over-sight but the policymaker says that we should make sure that we develop systems that are workable, because if we try devel-oping systems that are unworkable then it‟s likely that something else is going happen that could be even worse. This is a disturbing future part of the 21st century that we‟re looking at. And it‟s not just the United States, but it is this whole mechanized conflict and warfare that I see developing. Here as an international law-yer I am a very strong advocate of devel-oping through the United Nations and through treaty mechanisms a much better system of regulating and limiting these me-chanical devices. That‟s not going to be easy, but there have been other systems of international law that have been devel-oped in the past and I think that we should be able to do this, and the fact that there is a debate now going on in the United States about this is a good sign. R.A.: Now let’s switch a bit our discus-sion to CEU. When we had the chance to interview Gerhard Casper, President Emeritus of Stanford University, and I asked him about the challenges in lead-ing a University he replied as follows: “The University is not politics or the market place. It has to march to a different drum-mer. The search for knowledge must be car-ried out by critical analysis according to standards that themselves are subject to ex-amination and reexamination. All this calls for a lot of “gardening” every day. Getting out the weeds when they are still small and thinking very hard about what new trees to plant. Gardening is the real challenge.” How does John Shattuck carry out this gardening?

J.S.: I think that CEU is a remarkable labor-atory for critical thinking, which is the most important element of an educated human being in the 21st century. We live in a world where there is so much information constantly flowing at us and we need to be able to analyze and navigate this world because otherwise we fall prey to propa-ganda and various kinds of misconceptions; misconceptions lead to conflict, conflict leads to war. Educating people at CEU to be critical thinkers, to understand what this diversity of information is about and be able to separate fact from fiction. There are facts in the world, everything is not rel-ative. There is truth to what happened in a particular situation. We need to be able to understand how to get those facts, and be-yond that we need to analyze them and to make judgments about them, These judg-ments need to be based on some funda-mental principles, in our case principles of open society, democracy, tolerance, and an honest relationship with history so that we can come to grips with some of the terrible things that have happened in our own coun-tries. All of that is part of the education that we need to have here. The mechanisms of how to do this, how to engage in a university that does a great deal of research, we need to engage in cross disciplinary anal-yses. There is no one field that is ever going to solve the problem of the war in Bosnia. You need to have historians, sociologists, political scientists, and gender studies and policy people, and all the other elements that we have here at our university. We need to make sure that we‟re promoting that we don‟t allow particular fields to be-come isolated. We also need to connect the theory of what we‟re studying with the practices of the real world. I think we are doing that more, certainly through our School of Public Policy. At the bottom it‟s all about the search for truth.

R.A.: Do you think that there is a conflict between promoting an open society and the pursuit of the truth? J.S.: In some superficial way there may well be. But I think what the university needs to do is understanding, analyzing, and getting at the roots of what are these values of open society, recognizing that they are un-der contest, and looking at other systems and challenging ideologies. We shouldn‟t be in a bubble; we should be open to all elements of truth. That is really what CEU should be about. R.A.: As you know, the CEU Weekly is a student and alumni initiative now in its third academic year of existence. The vi-sion we have is that in 2031 the CEU Weekly will not only celebrate the 40th anniversary of the CEU, but also the 20th of its own existence. I would like to ask you if you could share a message for the students that will be running the newspa-per in the years to come. J.S.: Well, I think that they have a big job, to understand all the various parts of this university: Who are the people out there? What are their lives like? What brought them here? What are they inspired by? What kinds of professors are teaching them? Where they‟re going with their lives? This newspaper is about the journey of CEU, and to have this journey captured by a newspaper run by the students is a trib-ute both to the students, to you Rodrigo who put this together and others who work with you, and to the university that you‟ve decided to write about. You bring it to life, and I think that‟s what the students in 2031 will have to think about. I think it‟s great! You can watch the full 30-minute interview with

John Shattuck, on our You Tube channel

http://www.youtube.com/TheCEUWeekly

the CEU Weekly

CEU WEEKLY ANNIVERSARY April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

Page 5

MEET THE CEU WEEKLY TEAM Justina Poskeviciute - As someone who has some ex-perience in the field of jour-nalism and simply enjoys writing, I was very glad to

have discovered that CEU had its own student-run news-paper. For me personally,

The CEU Weekly has provided a great plat-form for pieces of various topics: from interna-tional politics to CEU community to events in Budapest itself. When I think about it, it is abso-lutely incredible how diverse our content is: an interview with a prominent Hungarian politician can be in the same issue with a satirical piece on Valentine‟s Day while an article on the pre-sent conflict in Mali can be published right by a photo report on a dance party in Budapest. That is why I think The CEU Weekly is so im-portant for our community: not only is it another outlet for our skills to develop, but also for our diversity to show. Also: no-one is as knowledge-

able as we all are together, right? Olya Pushchak - The news-paper at CEU is like a sharing pot of opinions – always gives you a chance to say what you think, and filling this

“pot” with content was always an interesting and prolific process. What I like the most about being a co-editor at CEU Weekly is a special feeling one might have every second week while turning pages of a super - fresh issue of a paper that had just arrived from the printer. And even if the issue wasn‟t ideal or had unno-ticed typos, holding that paper in my hands always felt good. I‟m glad to be in this great team of creative and dedicated people.

Razi Zaheer Saidi - I am a pursuing the MBA program at the CEU Business School. I am originally from India but have worked and lived all over the globe in the last 14 years. Working at the CEU Weekly

team was a great experience as every comes from a difference background and culture. The CEU Weekly team represents the very Ethos of the University, where students from all over the world come together to make a melting pot of sorts of Cultures, Experiences & Knowledge.

Julia Michalsky - Unfortu-nately, I have only managed to join the CEU Weekly team in the second semester. I enjoy writing about things that go along with my interests and do not necessarily deal with the topics I am dealing with during

my classes. In my opinion, a student run newspa-per is essential for any university to offer stu-dents a common place to express themselves and highlight the things that are important to them. Personally, I want to write more about student-led activities as well as places and events outside of CEU to encourage our readers get involved in things other than their MA topics. In addition, I hope to recruit a more diverse group of contributors for the CEU Weekly dur-ing the next academic year.

Agnes Kelemen - I am studying Jewish Studies and Nationalism Studies at CEU. Previously I grad-uated in history. I joined The CEU Weekly because I found it an exciting task to inform the interna-tional CEU community about what

is going on here in Hungary. I wrote some arti-

cles before to a youth camp‟s journal, however The CEU Weekly is my first experience in work-ing in an editorial board. Through this work I am learning a lot and at the same time I am part of a community as well.

Maryna Shevtsova - I always

liked writing but it never went further than millions of posts in my personal blog. So, when I joined CEU community, I thought it might finally be a great op-portunity to do something more

serious and public than write for narrow circle of my friends. Except of great journalist experi-ence, what you get at the CEU Weakly team is extremely warm and friendly environment, lot of interesting discussions, tons of inspiration – and then, sometimes we have great parties! I guess I enjoyed the most writing articles about student life at CEU and, of course, I was really pleased whenever I could write something re-lated to Gender studies.

Erik Kotlarik - The CEU Weekly embodies more than anything else the spirit of the Central European University. Each of its members comes not only from different country, but also has a different background. Lawyer

works here with environmentalist, person from gender studies with historian. Not only cooper-ating together, overcoming obstacles together, but most importantly, creating something tangi-ble. In the era where everything is dematerial-ized and ephemeral, each issue of the CEU Weekly is palpable and lasting. . Therefore I am glad that my voice have become part of its story. Although to be honest, all that work, all those meetings and extra deadlines were some-times a real pain in the ass…

Cartoon by Eriksson

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEU WEEKLY! It has been a year since I have joined the CEU Weekly team. Looking back at my work as a member of the Editorial Board and then as Editor in Chief, makes me feel proud of all the accomplish-ments of the newspaper in this academic year: the increase of the newspaper‟s popularity and circulation, the increase of visitors on our blog, and the support gained from the University. All these things helped us to consolidate the newspaper and to prepare it for the next academic year. These accomplishments would not have been possible without the efforts of my colleagues in the Editorial Board, and without the support and guidance of Rodrigo Avila B.

On this Thursday, April 11th, the CEU Weekly invites the CEU community to celebrate these accomplishments and its third anni-versary. On this occasion we would like to thank our readers, col-leagues, friends and donors, all of whom have inspired and made possible the existence of this newspaper.

I am looking forward to seeing you all there! Florin Zubascu Editor in Chief

The event will take place in at 6 PM, room 002, Nador 13

the the CEU Weekly THE CEU WEEKLY ANNIVERSARY

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April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

Everything is Fine

There is a short story in which a little boy has to answer the question „What do you want to become when you grow up‟ as a school assignment. His answer is simply the word „Happy‟. When the teachers tell him that he did not understand the assignment, he argues that the teacher does not under-stand life. To be honest, I always hated the story and I still think that it belongs to a MySpace profile of a mediocre teenager, rather than to the introduction part of any piece in any newspaper, especially the CEU Weekly and especially anything written

by… well, me.

The truth is that I started to relate to the little boy in the story. It begun back in Hun-gary, as a response to the question „What on earth do you want to do in Indonesia for

a whole year?‟, and it gradually became much more apparent when I had to face the „What on earth are you doing there?‟ ques-

tions.

When I was first asked to write something about my stay in Indonesia, I had a lot of ideas. I am full of funny stories, stories that make you think, and unexpected fun facts about life and people in East Java. Maybe in the next issue I will write some of those things, and the next piece will have hats of Boyolali policemen in the title. But not this time. Why? I took my time (something I have a lot of here) and looked back on myself one year ago in the beginning of April. I was a wreck. Honestly, CEU got on my nerves: I spent most of my time in the library or home alone, full of panic and self-loathing. I could not deal with pressure – mostly imagined pressure. My social life dropped dead, I couldn‟t sleep well... and although my world did not revolve around CEU during the last twelve months, I know most of you will be able to relate to at

least some of these symptoms. It sucks.

Now, after spending seven months on vari-ous islands in the Indonesian archipelago, I am actively being happy. While learning the language, riding more than 15 000 kilometers on a motorcycle and making friends from around the world, I learned a great deal about how I should be living. It

is now clear to me that I had my priorities wrong: I should have enjoyed these experi-ences first, and gone to CEU after. But this is not the message that I want to tell you this time. I want to tell you that everything is fine, and is going to be fine. The world is full of wonderful people and they are right there around you – don‟t miss the oppor-tunity to have the good times with them. It turns out that the teenagers on MySpace and the motivational chain emails were right after all (well, at least when you are looking at it from this little bubble that is

heaven on earth Indonesia).

Do I know what I want to be when I grow up? Hell yes! I want to remain exactly what

I am right now – happy.

Wow, this looks kind of pretentious. I think my old self would just start worrying about what people will think about him after

reading this :)

The author is participating in the Darmasiswa Indonesia program, writes a blog in Hungar-ian (indormation.wordpress.com), gave up drinking (kind of), and sometimes talks about

himself in third person.

Tamás György - CEU Alumnus and for-mer Managing Editor at The CEU Weekly

Because CEU had everything to have a newspa-per: a vibrant community, a plurality of voices,

the regular practice of debating and con-trasting points of view, a critical mass always willing to engage in a respectful dialogue. CEU provided the ideal structure to have a regularly issued newspaper: the only component missing was agency, and it was in that context that in the academic year 2010-2011 this project started. And it started with seven people sitting on a table discussing the need of having a reg-ularly issued newspaper within CEU. We were meeting every week discussing how should the newspaper be: printed or online, how often should it come out, how should we fund it, how should we name it, which sections should it have, who would be responsible for what. It took us two months to figure out some answers to these questions, and finally, on April 20 of 2011 we publish the first issue. We are doing this because we think is the right thing to do, but we are also doing this because of our interpretation of CEU: I think I speak on behalf of the team when I say that CEU is to us like a Republic, and founding and running this newspaper was and is our way of been virtuous citizens contributing to the deliberative democ-racy within the community to which we belong.

Rather than a personal project or initiative, we are trying to build a lasting institution. Our vi-

sion is that in 2031, The CEU Weekly will cele-brate not only the 40th anniversary of the Uni-versity, but also the 20th anniversary of its own being. This is a democratic project, not a job for money, and we have established in our constitu-tion that no individual financial gain related to the editorial work is nor will be allowed. Free and respectful debate is our belief.

Up to April 2013, in our third academic year of existence, the newspaper has produced 32 issues (all available at http://issuu.com/ceuweekly), printed almost 11,000 copies, pub-lished content by students and alumni from over 40 countries, and established a network of alumni correspondents in places like Egypt, Ga-za, Bosnia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The web-site (http://ceuweekly.blogspot.hu/) has started

to receive an average of 10,000 visits per month. We have covered CEU activities from

the Student Union to the CEU Sustainable Cam-pus Initiative, the project CEU Cares for the Homeless, the Gala Dinner and the Spring Ball, the Vagina Monologues and the life in the dorm. We have interviewed personalities rang-ing from the President Emeritus of Stanford Uni-versity or a Member of the European Parlia-ment to a student in the Roma Access Program or Mihail, the Cloakroom Guy. Central European University is a great labora-tory: it provides an ideal setting to practice an active citizenship. It is not only a place to gain a deeper conceptual and analytical understand-ing of the forces moving history, but also a place where the members of the community can exercise an active participation in the matters relevant to the community. I hope many more CEU members will continue to launch well-thought and lasting initiatives, and that their stories will be also reflected in this newspaper, which is nothing but a reflection of CEU‟s rich-ness and diversity, a humble tribute to the

greatness of this University.

Rodrigo Avila B.

Founding Editor of The CEU Weekly

Why Did We Start The CEU Weekly?

the the CEU Weekly HUNGARY NEWS

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

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Follow Up: What is New in the Sirály Story? The experiences of two CEU students.

As you might have read in the previous is-sue of The CEU Weekly, Sirály was evacu-ated following the discovery of a WWII Soviet grenade in Király utca, after a series of conflicts between the capital‟s mayor‟s office and Marom Cultural Association. The mayor‟s office let Marom work in Sirály until the 3rd of April, until the end of Passo-ver, accepting the request of the Jewish Community. However, not even the last week of Marom‟s work in Sirály could pass in complete peace. On April 29, Easter Friday evening (and during Passover), while a drag-show was taking place in Sirály, 20-25 policemen invaded the club asking for identity docu-ments from everyone inside. They did not answer questions regarding the aim of their action. Some CEU students were present as well. Diana and Chris kindly agreed to share their personal experiences from that evening with our readers. Diana Labiris remembers that “The show had wrapped up and there was a bit of a dance party on stage. I was just sit-ting in the audience. A man came on stage to announce that 10 police had arrived and that we could leave if we wanted or stay and get checked. He encouraged us to stay, to make the point that we were allowed to be there, but I was a little concerned because I didn’t have my documents. So my friends and I tried to leave, but the police had blocked the doors and were checking everyone’s IDs. It

was a bit of a tense wait—about 10 minutes or so—but they ended up just asking for my birthdate and letting me leave. The police were just like you normally find them on the street—quiet, stern. A little menacing, but probably just by virtue of how big they are. Didn’t seem to want any trouble. The audi-ence was pretty confused and a little scared. Especially those of us who didn’t have our documents! We didn’t really know what they wanted with us so we were just a little con-cerned about what they might do. The per-formance wasn’t really disturbed, per se. But it was really disappointing that the night was cut short. It was pretty clear that the police wouldn’t have been there had it not been a drag show—it obviously had something to do with the politics of the thing. That was the most upsetting part for a lot of people.” And Chris Zivalich, who himself was one of the performers told us: “I went to Sirály to perform drag. The entire show went fabulously, though I was frustrat-ed with the police disruption. The police offic-ers themselves are not as much to blame as the political climate in which leftist activism is routinely monitored and disciplined. The au-dience as a whole might have been annoyed with having to stand outside, whip out ID cards, and adhere to ridiculous “security” measures, yet this did not stop us from enjoy-ing ourselves. The party went on after the police invasion with as much energy, smeared make-up, drunk dancing, and unapologeti-

cally queer sass as ever before!” After the end of Passover, Marom Cultural Association ceased its activity in Sirály. István Tarlós, mayor of Budapest, and the leaders of Marom agreed that Marom would empty the club by April 30. Ádám Schönberger, president of Marom nonethe-less reassured everybody that they will continue their cultural activity as soon as possible, although they have not yet found such an appropriate place as Sirály. It is clear that the mayor of Budapest – follow-ing the Hungarian government – is fighting hard to suffocate every youth club that can be suspected of giving space to leftist or nonconformist activism. However, in numer-ous youth clubs of Budapest there is civil resistance to such authoritarianism. István Tarlós succeeded in closing Tűzraktér last year; now Sirály is no longer rented by Marom. It is getting harder to find a place for activism outside the current political es-tablishment, and associations like Marom are increasingly having to search for sup-port from within the private sphere. Never-theless, students and young intellectuals (not only leftists, but those who are simply open for reasoned dialogue) will undoubtedly go to new clubs as well to further discussion and debate.

Agnes Kelemen

With the contribution of Diana Labiris and

Chris Zivalich

An Exhibition by a CEU Alumnus On the occasion of The CEU Weekly‟s anni-versary, I would like to introduce something that the CEU community can be proud of. The curator of a very interesting current exhibition of the city “Leading the Dead” – The World of János Major” is a CEU alum-nus, Daniel Véri. He is an art historian, cur-rently a PHD candidate, and graduated as a master of arts at CEU‟s History Depart-ment in 2010. János Major (1934–2008), graphic and conceptual artist, was a major figure of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde and a member of the so-called IPARTERV generation that emerged in the sixties. This exhibition is dedicated to one characteristic segment of his oeuvre: works connected to death and demise; the world of tombs and cemeteries. Major‟s works presented in the exhibition

are organized along the lines of those spe-cific traumatic events that influenced the artist‟s oeuvre deeply: the Holocaust (Major‟s father belonged to the victims), the revolution of 1956 during which the young artist was touched and artistically inspired by the vision of hanged men on the streets of Budapest. And a third trauma that gave inspiration to a series of Major‟s work dur-ing his life (although he did not witness it), the Tiszaeszlár blood libel of 1882, a ma-jor encounter for assimilationist Hungarian Jewry with Anti-Semitism. Thus, Major‟s art builds upon specifically East-Central-European, Hungarian and Jewish experi-ences. Besides being a neo-avant-garde artist, Major was interested in documentation and also worked in projects dedicated to safe-guarding medieval statues found in Buda in the early seventies (his drawings based on the remnants help the visitors to imagine

the original state of the statues). He took plenty of photos in the Jewish cemeteries of Hungary, some of which are presented in the exhibition. They do not provide a sim-ple documentation of the past, but – given their titles – sometimes an ironic interpreta-tion as well. Nevertheless the value of János Major‟s art, and of the current exhibition, lies not mere-ly in its artistic virtue, but in the fact that individuals like Major help us to understand Eastern Europe‟s history during Socialism – especially the history of the sixties and sev-enties – better and more deeply.

Agnes Kelemen, Nationalism Studies With the contribution of Daniel Véri,

alumnus, History Department The Exhibition is Open until 13 April 2013, at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall, 1062 Budapest, Andrássy street 69–71.

he Weethe CEU Weekly THE WEEKLY PUZZLE

April 10, 2013, Year 3, Issue 32

About the CEU Weekly This is a student-alumni initiative that seeks to provide CEU with a regularly issued newspaper. The CEU Weekly is a vehicle of ex-pression for the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that integrate CEU‟s open society: free and respectful public debate is our aim. We offer a place in which current events and student reflections can be voiced. Plurality, respect and freedom of speech are our guiding principles.

Editor in Chief: Florin Zubaşcu Managing Editor: Justina Poškevičiūtė

Editorial Council: Ágnes Kelemen, Julia Michalsky, Olha Pushchak, Maryna Shevtsova, Rodrigo Avila B., Erik Ko-

tlárik, Razi Zaheer, Thor Morante, Sergio Rejado Albaina, Alexander Minbaev.

Proofreading: Imogen Bayley ceuweekly.blogspot.com

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