David Brown
Václav Havel’s prescient warning
In the U.S., the extreme right has had it in for modern-day liberal education. They also did in Hungary, where the government has just ordered the closure of Central European University.
For some time, I've been reading about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's threats toward Central European University (CEU), a U.S.-affiliated institution where I had the privilege of teaching in the late 1990s.
But I never really believed the Hungarian government would be foolhardy enough to shut it down, as was recently announced.
An expatriate in Prague
An eyewitness’s view of the unique and compounding contradiction and turmoil of the post-Communist Czech Republic
“Prague is sooooooo beeeeautiful - I can't believe we eeeever let the Communists have it for themselves,” exclaimed the woman standing in the American Express line, so that everyone could hear her and dutifully nod their heads in assent. Like so many passing fashions, with time the situation compounded...