Hungary's Philosophy Affair: Bringing It All Out Into The Open

A small number of philosophers has been singled out by the Hungarian government and accused of a vague and changing bundle of things, but it is unclear whether these are just the generic and systemic complaints that researchers everywhere make about one another's funding or there is bonafide evidence of rule-breaking or crime. The evidence has not been made known. The accusations are blurred and keep mutating. What is aired is mostly just generic and systemic complaints familiar to every funded researcher in the world; these do not distinguish the accused philosophers in any way from any other funded researcher anywhere in the world. The vague and changing bundle of accusations nevertheless keeps being treated as it were based on evidence of rule-breaking or criminality. Police have been called in to investigate (with no result, other than researcher harassment by police investigations). The accusations are also being pursued by a governmental research funding overseer. The accused researchers are reputable scholars of long standing, some of them world famous (and prominent critics of the government). It is not known why they were singled out for these accusations. The accusations and their targets are not the result of a systematic random audit to detect malfeasance, within or between fields: They are simply a heterogeneous and mutating bundle of ad hoc accusations, levelled against the philosophers for unknown reasons, and then turned into a sustained press campaign of vilification by the Hungarian government-controlled press, without evidence, verdict or any sign of coming to an end. The accused scholars, who have never committed a crime or behaved contrary to rules, see the process as a campaign of police-state-like governmental harassment against its critics and opponents, perhaps motivated by the wish to seek revenge against those associated with the preceding government. There are other, similar campaigns of harassment and vilification ongoing against other scholars by the police and the governmental press, while curbs on the shrinking independent press tighten. Two Open Letters have been written on the accused philosophers have been written by foreign scholars, one by the American Psychological Association's Eastern Division, and one by the External and Honorary members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences... Discussion -- but temperate discussion only -- is invited at the ScienceInsider site from all sides: http://bit.ly/SciHung