Beside Magyar Nemzet, other the government-tied newspapers and news channels (MTV, Hír TV, and Echo TV) were involved in the campaign. If not stated otherwise, all quotes are from the editorials of Hungarian Nation starting January 8, 2011. About the grant results see →.
Both Heller and Radnóti publicly expressed strong condemnation of the politics and decision-making practices of Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz Party.
Beside an appeal signed by the President of the German Society for Philosophy, Julian Nida-Rümelin, and honorary member Jürgen Habermas, there have been press releases (Hannah Arendt-Zentrum der Universität Oldenburg) and protest letters (e.g.: The New School for Social Research in New York) in defense of the accused philosophers; see →, →, →, and →. Laszlo Tengelyi, Professor of philosophy at Wuppertal University, reflected on both affairs. His open letter was forwarded to some German papers (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and scientific societies; see →.
Magyar Nemzet, January 26, 2011. The photograph was taken at the University of Pecs by Ferenc Kálmándy in 2009.
György Vári.
See →.
Magyar Nemzet, Saturday, February 5, 2011.
József Mélyi, see →.
Viktor Orbán, “To Preserve the Hungarian Quality of Being,” speech given at the sixth “Civic Picnic” at Kotcse (Hungary) in September, 2009.
The article was based on reports published before February 19, 2011. Since then, two of the accused project leaders, Sándor Radnóti and János Weiss, have been acquitted. More recently, a new French organization called Chercheurs sans Frontières – Free Science has provided financial and legal assistance to researchers who may be physically or morally threatened, expressing solidarity with the incriminated Hungarian philosophers.