Freeszfe

Choral singing, flag waving, a man bouncing in the air, candles in the rain: all the tropes of popular protest. Yellow face masks printed with a black raised hand—Covid-era props for demonstration. And the slogans: “We stand for academic freedom!” “We are the essence of the university,” “We stand for our autonomy and our rights until our last breath.”

There was plenty of theater at this protest, which came to be known, as #FreeSzFE. It was launched in 2020 at the University for Theater and Film Arts of Budapest (SzFE) to defend academic freedom imperiled by the investiture of a government-appointed chancellor. On October 23, the number of protesters swelled from 450 students to 30,000 supporters from the general population in commemoration of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Three videos of SzFE student actions appear in the Artists’ Street.

Rooted in a long tradition of campus sit-ins, blockades, and street actions, the 71-day #FreeSzFE blockade—now the Freeszfe Society, led by former students and an ex-faculty member of Hungary’s premier theater and film school—became a blueprint for subsequent university action against authoritarian regimes seeking to curtail history to political propaganda and reduce curricula to party lines. To ensure that affected students could still graduate, several universities launched an emergency exit program as part of a unique and swift Pan-European alliance.

At a time when the US government is taking sweeping measures to cut funding and exert control over some of its most eminent universities, not only does the oft self-righteous stance castigating Eastern European regimes as backward not hold anymore, but the lesson givers have also changed sides.

Text: Claire Tancons