Let us be happy, for we are young

Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus. Let us be happy, for we are young.

The words of the academic hymn, set to music by Franz Liszt and many other composers, and traditionally associated with the beginning of term, expresses the enthusiasm with which we begin the new academic year. We think of our projects for the year ahead and, especially if we are young, of the delightful prospect of our life which lies before us.

Unfortunately it is rather difficult to feel optimistic about the coming year in the present climate. War has broken out in Europe, on Hungary’s own borders. With war comes suffering and privation but also the eclipse of freedom.

Wherever we look in the so-called free world, we see political and judicial harassment of dissidents. Steve Bannon, the leading opposition campaigner in the United States, was arrested in the run-up to the mid-term elections to Congress. Eric Verhaeghe, a prominent dissident journalist in France, and a close friend of MCC Visiting Fellow Edouard Husson, was taken into police custody for 24 hours last week, in a clear act of intimidation by the authorities. And in Ireland, Enoch Burke, a history teacher, was imprisoned for refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns in his classroom.

Unfortunately, as you all know, Hungary is also in the crosshairs of this attack on freedom and dissent.

Speaking in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen gave a very aggressive and warmongering speech. The EU has evidently abandoned its role as a peacekeeper, for which it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 and has instead adopted the role of warmonger. ‘This is about autocracy against democracy,’ she thundered.

She was talking about Russia but ‘autocracy’ is exactly the word used later in the same chamber to attack Hungary, in the European Parliament resolution debated just after she spoke. For the people in Brussels, Hungary is as much an ideological enemy as Russia is and it is no coincidence that Hungary is already the victim of financial sanctions and that she will continue to be so, like Russia, until there is regime change. It is, indeed, all about the regime. The rule of Brussels or the rule of Budapest. The rule of Nato or the multipolar world with different power centres.

The challenge is therefore very great. We academics and students have a special role - to seek the truth and then to speak it. We are very lucky to have years or decades at our disposal to perform these noble tasks: many people do not have that luxury. So it is with great joy in our hearts that we should draw inspiration from two mottos drawn from the Gospel, ‘Do not be afraid’ and ‘The truth will make you free’.

But freedom is not only individual and personal but also collective. That is why it is essential to preserve not just the small-scale individual freedom which existed around the kitchen table in the late Soviet period but also the collective freedom embodied and protected by the state. In that spirit, let us indeed recall the words of the penultimate verse of the academic hymn:

Vivat et respublica, et qui illam regit, Vivat nostra civitas, quae nos hic protegit.

Speech given by John Laughland at the opening ceremony of the new academic year at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Budapest, 16 September 2022.