The Government Took Over Their University. Here's How These Students Fought Back.

From a four-mile-long human chain to a torchlight ceremony in the rain to the appearance of Blind Justice at the Halls of Justice—the playful, passionate demonstrations and symbols that arose from Hungary's Freeszfe movement inspired artists around the world. Todd London, a leading figure in nonprofit theatre in the United States, comes together with László Upor, former vice rector/acting rector of the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) in Budapest and a founding member of Freeszfe Society. Their conversation dives into the mechanism of governmental incursion in the arts and higher education and provides examples of how artists can use their talents to stand up to tyranny.

Todd London: We're going to focus today on ways young theatre and film artists rallied together over several months to resist governmental attacks on their school. This is also profoundly, painfully, and inspiringly the story of László Upor and his colleagues on the faculty and administration of that university.

László was serving as rector of the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest (the equivalent of our university presidents) when in 2020 the government of Viktor Orbán set out to take over that university and, ultimately, all the universities of Hungary by transforming them into private foundations run and essentially owned by a handful of government loyalists, most not actual educators.

If the idea of a government attacking academic freedom and university autonomy sounds familiar to you, that just means you're living in the United States right now. These coordinated attempts to control who gets taught, what gets taught and researched, and who teaches, as well as to privatize the assets of public universities—these are not innovations. They're American adaptations of a model for change pioneered in Hungary over the past several years.

As I said, we're going to focus on the students, the brave, dedicated, talented students of SZFE. László and I met almost thirty years ago when László was in residence at the Public Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, and I was artistic director of New Dramatists. He came to meet playwrights and find plays to bring home to translate in Hungary, as he has for more than fifty American and British plays. We both spent decades teaching, writing, and doing dramaturgical work, and together we created a four-country, eight-playwright exchange with colleagues in Serbia and the Czech Republic. A couple of years ago, László came to New York to speak at Columbia and Yale about the fight to save his university, prompted by a brilliant article Alisa Solomon wrote for Theater. He stayed with my family and me.

We later hatched the idea of translating his book about the university autonomy fight in Hungary for readers in the United States, a project I thought would be fun and give us a chance to hang out together. Then, two days after the November presidential election, I realized, No, it's not fun at all. It's necessary. We urgently need to tell this story for two basic reasons that we'll focus on today: One, Orbán’s autocratic/oligarchic model is the model explicitly being followed by the Trump administration, which idolizes Orbán. Two, because the joyful, theatrical resistance movement by the students at SZFE offers a model for our own resistance. If we believe in the power of arts and theatre and collaborative creation, if we believed in it before the present historical moment, we have to draw on that belief and the skills we've learned from our creative efforts even more urgently in times of assault. It's necessary to learn from our global neighbors, so many of whom have faced much more consistent and violent attacks on their freedoms than those of us teaching and working in the United States.

I want to kick us off by reading this one paragraph from László’s book Majdnem lehetetlen as a prelude to some of the scenes you'll see here. He writes,

Anyone who, until now, still believed that social responsibility, emotional sensitivity, lived theatricality, and deep knowledge of the world can’t be contained in a political gesture, expressed with mirth and playfulness, anyone who still believed that mirth and playfulness are inappropriate responses to serious matters—well, they’d better think again. This sort-of-protest revealed the students’ greatest strength: bottomless creativity, consistently married to a defiant yet open-hearted desire to communicate. A rich immediacy rarely seen in our public sphere.

On the night of 31 August 2020, the students had planned a costume ball in the street outside to mark the end of 155 years of their university's autonomy. The next day the government takeover was to begin, the appointed trustees officially taking charge. The students came to the ball in all sorts of fanciful costumes they pulled from stock. They called it the “Dead End of 155 Years Ball.” In the middle of the festivities, the skies opened up and a rainy deluge sent them inside their theatre. It wasn't clear what they would do next, until, as they counted down to midnight and the day that would bring the new regime, standing sopping wet among the audience seats and aisles, they voted to blockade and occupy the main school building.

Artists’ liberal thinking is supposed to be very dangerous to the state, especially to the illiberal state.

László Upor: Let me tell you that I'm really, really angry with the government—and not only with my own but also with your government. So forgive me if I would speak ill of those two governments, but I try to avoid four-letter words, except for the four-letter word all illiberal and abusive governments think is most dangerous: “F-R-E-E.” That's the four letter word our masters don't like to hear, and that's what they want to take away from us.

So this was the moment when the students decided to blockade the university. It wasn't the beginning of the whole movement, and it wasn't the end of the movement. The so-called culture war had been going on for decades and intensified in early 2019 by the time I became leader of the university.

When the Hungarian government decided to take over the universities with lightning speed, it had at least two reasons: to control and take away public properties, public assets, and put them into private pockets, but also to control our intellectual lives. So all the universities had to go through a forced transformation. Today, virtually all Hungarian University universities are transformed. The University of Theatre and Film was special because it's also an art university. And artists’ liberal thinking is supposed to be very dangerous to the state, especially to the illiberal state.

When the news of the planned transformation was revealed, the leaders and staff of the university started organizing, and we did it in a very transparent way. Quite soon, students started joining us. We wanted to do everything in unity, in collaboration, in solidarity. The students began organizing. Since we knew that 31 August 2020 would bring the end of those 155 years, we organized two events to mark the day: one dramatic press conference and this extravagant costume party. In the afternoon of the last day of August 2020, the whole leadership of the university resigned in protest, an unprecedented move.

That same night, the students decided to blockade the building, and they stayed for seventy-one long days. They came up with the most brilliant performative actions, working together with the staff and the leadership, who remained for a thirty-day grace period after resigning.

On the first day the students blocked the building entrance with wooden planks. The university chancellor, who was very supportive of the freedom fight, said, “No, that's not safe. If there's anything happening inside, the wooden planks will prevent people from leaving the building safely. Find something else.” So that's what the students did. They found red-and-white striped tape. And you will hear about that striped tape later, but this is how the entrance of the university looked those days.

Todd: I just want to add that this red and white tape is Hungary’s caution tape; it’s not yellow like in the United States.

László: From day one, they organized very performative press conferences, and the whole press corps, even the rightwing government media, came out to hear what they were saying. Every day they performed something.

Most important, the student Forum was their Parliament during the blockade. They made all major decisions there, debating everything as a grassroots democracy. Every single day they held forums lasting several hours with very intricate rules for speaking, moderation, and consensus. Throughout, they were supported by citizens of the city.

We established the Learning Republic, which we’ll discuss in a minute. The blockade lasted seventy-one days, but not because it failed. On day seventy-two the second COVID lockdown started, and the students decided together to leave the building.

We still had a few more months to finish first semester, so the Learning Republic moved online. Once that semester was over, people who didn't want to collaborate with the new, illegitimate university leaders left for good and founded Freeszfe Society. We created a program nicknamed “Emergency Exit” to make sure they received their diplomas. You’ll hear about that, too.

This is, in a nutshell, the story of the movement.

Each day a new kind of theatre happened in the streets, and that theatre was never aggressive or violent; it was embracing.

Todd: One of the things that's really significant to me as an American baby boomer is that my images of student takeover and blockade basically begin in the sixties. There might be violence involved, police crackdowns. The SZFE student movement feels revelatory because of how performative and creative the demonstrations were. Each day a new kind of theatre happened in the streets, and that theatre was never aggressive or violent; it was embracing.

László: Yes. An example: One of the basic problems with the transformation was that the new lords of the university rewrote all the basic documents of the university, very obviously taking away the university’s autonomy. We wanted to write something they couldn’t rewrite. We called it the Charta Universitatis, or “charter of the university.” The students came up with the idea of how to make it public, how to share it with everyone else.

A famous Hungarian actress—our Meryl Streep—read out the charter, a declaration of independence for the university. She passed it from her hands to another hand, to another hand, to another, until it reached the Parliament. Thousands of hands, because the idea was to offer it to everyone, to let their touch sign the charter until it arrived at the Parliament.

Todd: That chain ran more than four miles long.

László: We expected five thousand people, but ultimately fifteen thousand people touched the charter and relayed it to the Parliament. The students and their supporters refused to behave like victims. That was one key to the whole movement: Don't act like victims.

It was September 2020 between the two lockdowns; COVID was very present and dangerous. People were advised to keep social distance. Our brilliant students used the red-and-white striped caution tape to mark this distance. Fifteen thousand ribbons of red-and-white tape. Rather than throwing the tape away after the demonstration, making garbage and pollution, students advised people to take them home and use them. Suddenly, the whole country was covered in red and white stripes. Even today, five years later, you can see people flying the stripes from their handbags, bicycles, and balconies. It became a collective symbol.

Todd: The celebratory nature of that demonstration, delivering the charter to the Parliament, is for me balanced by expressions of mourning and grief, including saying goodbye to the faculty. The faculty resigned in August, effective the end of September. The students staged a farewell ceremony by torch light and ushered László and his colleagues in.

László: From day one of the blockade, the students decided that this little balcony over the entrance of the building would become a small public stage. People from all walks of Hungarian culture, people who supported this movement, came in half-hour shifts, and they stood over the entrance to the university as kind of honor guards. This became such a popular street performance that people flooded there to see who was on guard, this hour or this day. For the farewell they orchestrated, we stood on that little balcony with our torches, and the student body paid silent tribute down on the street for thirty long minutes.

Todd: You have more examples of these creative actions. One song, based on a very famous folk song about a secret love, became the anthem of the protests and spread throughout the city and beyond, but rewritten as the “secret university.” It became part of every gathering.

László: Yes, they also performed it in theatres for the first month or so of the blockade. Every single night students went to theatres around Budapest and in many regions, and at the curtain call instead of the actors just taking a bow, the students went on stage and sang this anthem, together with the actors and, very often, with people in the auditorium.

Todd: How did the students get away without being attacked and shut down? Why didn't the government just come in, kick the students out of the building, and take over the school?

László: One of the main reasons, I think, is that they were nice, honest young people who offered their faces and names to the movement from day one. It wasn't a movement with one leader, and it wasn't a faceless crowd. It was a movement represented by hundreds of determined, innocent faces. So by the time the blockade began, even government propaganda couldn't repaint them as terrorists. They were honest, innocent young people fighting against the bad, illiberal government. I think the government didn't want to risk looking bad by attacking them.

It was a movement represented by hundreds of determined, innocent faces. So by the time the blockade began, even government propaganda couldn't repaint them as terrorists.

Todd: There's another earlier example involving a policeman on the street. Do you want to tell that story?

László: The Open University was one way the students involved the public. There was always something going on our street, noise and crowds, etc., and it was uncomfortable for people living there. The students wanted to repay them and decided to hold a daylong Open University with lots of free classes and little performances. There was always a police car watching—I suppose, partly defending the students, not just surveilling them. One guy was sitting in the car taking photographs of the student performances and the crowd, and one of our teachers went up to him and said, “What are you doing here? Why are you taking photographs?” The police person said, “I'm sorry. I just wanted to send my girlfriend the images how wonderful this festival is.” He later joined the communal singing with the students. This is how collaborative the police were from the start.

Todd: Let’s talk about legality. I know that you took every legal action that was possible. Can you talk about how that played out in these demonstrations?

László: That was, again, unprecedented. We didn't just demonstrate, but we also fought legal fights, which may be common in the United States, but is extremely rare in Hungary. We sued the government. We sued the ministry and issued loads of legal actions, which surprised the authorities. But we didn't do this in a normal, everyday way. It was also theatrical. The person you see here is Minerva.

The students decided that Minerva the goddess was the perfect person to demonstrate in in front of the Office of Education. Also, when we approached the ministry of justice, obviously the best person to present our legal papers was the goddess Justitia, with, naturally, the blindfold in red and white. So nothing was un-performative.

Todd: What is Justicia being handed here?

László: Those are all the legal papers we wanted to present to the Ministry. So one student, as representative of the student board, would offer her this thing, and she would carry it into the Ministry of Justice.

Todd: So you have this protest movement, this blockade with daily performances, led by a grassroots, democratic group of students who meet, discuss and debate everything—and really practice participatory democracy. What’s happening with classes?

László: We briefly mentioned the Learning Republic, another invention. At the beginning of the blockade, there was huge unity between the students and administration. Later, we realized that some of the students wanted to go on learning while keeping up the blockade. Others said that there's no point in classes, no point in behaving. The first group said, “But we are here to learn. And if we don't continue our education, it looks that we are revolting against our own teachers, who are our collaborators.” These two groups almost split apart.

My colleague Gábor Németh dreamed up the Learning Republic, where students could go on learning and teachers go on teaching in the blockaded building. But students would also get credits for political actions, for organizing the movement, etc. Everyone could choose if they wanted to go to classes or organize the next performative actions. Of course, the government deemed this to be not only illegitimate, but also illegal. We laughed at that.

Todd: Can you give us a sense of what happened next? In November 2020 the blockade had to end. You had been working secretly throughout Europe to create a coalition to get the students through their training. Can you tell us about the Emergency Exit plan and what happened next?

László: Yes, we had secret negotiations with five European universities and agreed that they would create a consortium. One of the five universities would adopt each of the students who wanted to leave the university. The idea was to let the students not lose their credits and for us to be able to get them through to the end of their studies. Those five universities adopted students in groups, not one by one, but whole classes of actors or directors. They would enroll at the other academy but not leave the country. They would stay in Budapest studying with us, their old teachers, and we would be commissioned by one of those universities to teach their students who were actually our students. Eventually the students got their diplomas as students of one of those five European universities. By the way, we got the European Citizen’s Prize for this Emergency Exit program.

Todd: Just a note: These students were filmmakers and photographers and performers. They started documenting everything from the start, as did an outside documentary team that was asked to leave when the blockade started. Part of the work ahead is to make the materials accessible and public—including editing the full documentary. László’s book came out in 2024, and we hope that United States readers will see our version in 2026.

László: Thank you all for being with us. Thank you very much.