7 Feb 2012 | Africa, Index Index, minipost
A radio journalist was abducted and tortured by police last week in Djibouti, Africa. Farah Abadid Hildid of radio station La Voix de Djibouti, was forced into a car by one uniformed police officer and one plain clothed officer on Thursday morning. The journalist was blindfolded and taken to a cell, where he was forced to remove his clothes, and was beaten with pieces of rubber. Hildid’s abductors told him: “We’ve had enough of you. You must stop broadcasting information about us. You must stop bothering the police and the Department for Investigation and Documentation. It will be the worse for you if you continue.”
8 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features
This week, academics from all over Europe are gathering at the Times Higher Education Europe Universities Summit in Budapest.
The conference has the strapline, “Pairing higher education excellence with world-leading research and innovation” and professors and academics including a pro-vice chancellor of Oxford University Anne Trefethen are speaking.
So far, so dull. Except behind the headlines, this appears to be an expensive exercise in academia washing, with Times Higher Education having struck a deal with the Hungarian government to rehabilitate the reputation of Hungary’s universities, with the conference seemingly being a key part of that strategy.
This is a tale of once-respected institutions being captured by power and money. Ancient Hungarian universities taken over by the cronies of an autocratic government that wants to control what is taught and researched, and a respected and once independent UK higher education magazine, bought by a private equity company keen to monopolise on the magazine’s most valuable asset – its global universities ranking list. The biggest losers: those who believe in academic freedom.
Hungary has been under increasingly autocratic rule since the leader of the Fidesz party, Viktor Orbán, became prime minister in 2010. Orbán has spent the past 15 years bringing independent institutions in the country under the control of his party. Public broadcast channels have been turned into propaganda machines and oligarchs with ties to the government have bought up most private media outlets. According to the latest country report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), those oligarchs now own 80% of the media.
Orbán and his party have now turned their attention to universities. In 2017, Orbán’s first move was to pass a law (subsequently found to be unlawful under EU legislation) that effectively banned the Central European University from operating in Hungary. The CEU’s main crime was to be independent, a US institution and founded by the financier George Soros.
Orbán then turned his attention to troublesome domestic universities. In 2021, the government transferred 11 state universities and billions of euros of state assets to asset management “foundations” run by loyalists of the Fidesz party. Orbán claimed that this guaranteed the independence of state universities, while most people saw the move as a way of giving Fidesz loyalists a stranglehold on academia. Another slew of universities were later “foundationalised”, meaning they are also now managed and funded by foundations rather than directly by the state, and the small number of public universities remaining in Hungary are now starved of funds. For academic freedom, foundationalisation was disastrous. Hungary’s universities have plummeted to the bottom 20 to 30% of this year’s Academic Freedom Index (along with Chad, Libya, Vietnam and Djibouti).
The takeover and asset stripping of most of Hungary’s state universities by friends of the government set the country on a collision course with the EU. In early 2023, the European Commission excluded 21 of the privatised universities (though not individual academics) from EU Horizon Europe funding for research and innovation, and from Erasmus+ funding for academic mobility, over concerns around corruption and public procurement. Hungary challenged the ruling, but in December 2024, the European Commission upheld its decision. Increasingly isolated and now a pariah in the academic world, the Hungarian government desperately needed help to rehabilitate the image of its universities.
The Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement has an illustrious history. It was founded in 1971 and was a sister paper to the Times Educational Supplement (TES), part of The Times stable. The first editor Brian MacArthur recruited some of the most talented young journalists of their generation including Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hennessy, David Henke and Robin McKie to report on the growing university and polytechnic sector in the UK.
With the early 1990s, came university league tables. By 2019, and several venture capital owners later, THE was carved out from the TES family and taken over by the private equity company Inflexion. Why? Because THE’s Global University Rankings had become big business, influencing everything from university funding and student numbers to UK student visas. There is a lot of money to be made in offering consultancy to universities to help them improve their place in the rankings, or in the words of THE’s website: “we have experienced a growing demand for bespoke, practical insights to help universities and governments alike drive strategic planning and growth across a range of interests in higher education.”
In April 2024, the Hungarian government’s Ministry of Culture and Innovation and THE signed a “groundbreaking deal” . THE, under the leadership of its chief global affairs officer Phil Baty, said it was going to “carry out a detailed analysis of Hungary’s higher education system, analysing its current performance and benchmarking it with successful global education hubs based on THE’s gold standard World University Rankings and review this in light of the ministry’s ambitions”.
Hungary’s Minister of Culture and Innovation Balázs Hankó was more explicit, saying the aspiration was to increase the number of foreign students at Hungarian universities, and have a Hungarian university in the world’s top 100 by 2030. Luckily for Hungary, academic freedom is not one of the measures used in THE’s rankings system.
THE’s deal with Hungary did receive some attention but only on specialist websites such as University World News, which highlight the conflict of interest between running a rankings system and a consultancy to help universities improve their rankings. THE is not the only rankings organisation to do this; QS also run a rankings system and consultancy, but in THE’s case there’s a potential further conflict because the company still publishes an online magazine which is one of the most trusted sources of information in the higher education sector, especially in the UK. Additionally, THE has also recently acquired Inside Higher Ed and Poets&Quants, both large US-based higher education publishers and sources of news.
A research paper by King’s College from 2022, From newspaper supplement to data company: Tracking rhetorical change in the Times Higher Education’s rankings coverage, tracked how over the past 20 years, THE had gradually prioritised being a data company over a journalistic outlet. And what chance is there of THE’s editorial team now running an exposé of Hungary’s university system? Very little, I believe. In fact, in November 2024, THE ran a sympathetic interview with Hungary’s culture minister Hankó without mentioning the contract he had signed with THE’s consultancy arm only months before. However, a cursory search of “Hungary” on THE’s online archive does bring up some past articles that report on and scrutinise the country’s free expression landscape, including a piece from 2017 on the state of higher education in Hungary, and a piece from 2021 on the repercussions of the university privatisation scheme.
Should professors and academics from Oxford and Durham universities and King’s College London be participating in what amounts to an academia-washing exercise by THE and the Hungarian government in Budapest this week? I don’t think so. Ironically, THE columnist Eric Heinze was in two minds about attending a conference about free speech in Hungary back in 2017.
While some in the field believe it is valid for individual universities to buy consultancy services from rankings organisations like THE to help them smooth out problems such as data organisation or ensuring consistent spellings of their name, THE collaborating with authoritarian governments, which have sought to control what their universities can teach, is surely of a different order. What is the point of universities if they are not institutions that can decide their own research and teaching programmes, independent of the government and government appointees?
And surely universities which score badly in the Academic Freedom Index shouldn’t be in the rankings at all. As Donald Trump tries to wrest control of universities in the USA (which regularly top the rankings) and Chinese universities are increasingly shooting up the tables, academic freedom is going to become an increasing issue.
THE is a trusted source of news in higher education, as is the US equivalent, Inside Higher Education. But there’s a threat to independent journalism, and academic freedom, when the company that owns these magazines collaborates with countries like Hungary, which consistently try to control freedom of expression.
Index on Censorship contacted the Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement press office for comment but aside from an automated acknowledgement email, it did not respond by the time of publishing.
8 Sep 2021
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content_no_spaces” css_animation=”fadeIn” css=”.vc_custom_1630693196413{padding-top: 105px !important;padding-bottom: 105px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cover23-scaled.jpg?id=117362) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Freedom of Expression Awards 2021″ font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center|color:%23ffffff” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”117377″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The Nominees
The 2021 Freedom of Expression Awards will take place on 12 September 2021.
There are three nominees in each category, where each inspiring individual will be judged on their outstanding contributions in the areas of the arts, campaigning and journalism.
The full list of the nominees is below.
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Arts
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”black” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Daria Apakhonchich”][vc_custom_heading text=”Artist and activist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Daria Apakhonchich is a Russian performance artist and feminist activist. Daria creates artistic performances to protest violence against women and support women’s rights in Russia. She contributed to the ‘Vulva Ballet’ in 2020. The piece was produced in defence of Yulia Tsvetkova, an LGBTQ artist activist and herself a former Index Awards winner, who faces up to six years in prison for her body positive feminist drawings.
In December 2020, Daria learned from media reports that she was the first artist to be labelled a “Foreign Agent” by Russian authorities. She was arrested and fined in January 2021. She also lost her teaching job with the Red Cross due to her activism and feminist engagement.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117390″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maxim-znak/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”0px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Émerson Maranhão”][vc_custom_heading text=”Film director” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Émerson Maranhão is a Brazilian film director who focuses on LGBTQ+ visibility. Émerson’s last movie, Those Two, follows the lives of two transgender men and their journey towards self-acceptance. In 2019, the Brazilian government halted state funding for films representing LGBTQ themes. A judge later determined that this decision was discriminatory and ordered that funding be reinstated, a victory in a time of rising censorship of LGBTQ+ artistic expression in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117394″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/volha-takarchuk/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Tatyana Zelenskaya”][vc_custom_heading text=”Artist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Tatyana Zelenskaya is an illustrator from Kyrgyzstan, her works focus on freedom of expression and women’s rights. Tatyana highlights social issues, including domestic violence and women’s rights. More recently, her work has been inspired by the growing anti-government protests which have erupted across Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
In 2020, she created the artwork for the video game Swallows: Spring in Bishkek which raises awareness about bride-kidnapping. The interactive game provides useful information on bride-kidnapping with the aim of challenging traditional perceptions of the practice.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117407″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Campaigning
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”black” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Nandar”][vc_custom_heading text=”Activist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Nandar is a feminist activist, translator and storyteller from Myanmar. Nandar grew up in a village in the north-eastern Shan state of Myanmar. She experienced first-hand the hardships that many women face when living in a society with traditional gender roles. Nandar created a podcast to tackle taboo topics in the country such as menstruation and abortion.
She also founded the Purple Feminists Group to promote feminist literature, challenge mainstream taboos, amplify women and girls’ voices, and raise awareness of gender-based violence.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117408″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Anouar Rahmani”][vc_custom_heading text=”Writer” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Anouar Rahmani is an Algerian writer and human rights defender. Through his writings, Anouar explores human rights issues in Algeria, including those of LGBTQ+ people and those of religious minorities. He is the author of two novels, The City of White Shadow and Jibril’s Hallucination. He has faced significant threats and online harassment for his writings. Rahmani has also been harassed by Algerian authorities due to his work. In 2017, he was arrested for blasphemy and in 2020, he was forced to pay a 50,000 Dinar fine for “insulting state officials”.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117410″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Abdelrahman “Moka” Tarek”][vc_custom_heading text=”Activist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Abdelrahman “Moka” Tarek is an Egyptian human rights defender and Member of the 6 April Movement. He took part in the 25 January Egyptian Revolution. In 2013 he was arrested at the Shura Council Protest along with 24 other peaceful protesters. He was convicted to 3 years in prison as well as a 3-year suspended sentence.
In September 2019, Abdelrahman was assaulted by a police officer as he was serving his suspended sentence at Qsar Al-Nil Police station. He disappeared soon after sharing this aggression on social media. Since then, new terrorism-related charges have been pressed against him and he was sent back to Tora prison.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117409″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Journalism
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”black” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Kadar Abdi Ibrahim”][vc_custom_heading text=”Activist and journalist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Kadar Abdi Ibrahim is a human rights activist and journalist from Djibouti. Kadar Abdi Ibrahim was the co-director and chief editor of L’Aurore, Djibouti’s only privately-owned media outlet. In 2016, the newspaper was banned following the publication of a story about the massacre of 29 people, understood to have been perpetrated by state forces. In April 2018, just days after returning from Geneva, intelligence service agents raided his house and confiscated his passport. He has been unable to leave the country since then.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117413″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Verónica Chávez”][vc_custom_heading text=”Journalist” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Verónica Chávez is the co-owner of 100% Noticias, an online Nicaraguan media outlet dedicated to providing critical journalism. Despite President Daniel Ortega’s strict crackdown on media in Nicaragua, 100% Noticias has continued to provide critical journalism. In 2018, police raided the offices of 100% Noticias, confiscated the station’s equipment and arrested Chávez, her husband journalist Miguel Mora and news director Lucia Pineda. Chávez was subsequently released, but Mora and Pineda were charged and imprisoned for a year. Chávez continued to run 100% Noticias during that time.
Ortega’s intimidation recently intensified and in October 2020, Chávez was assaulted by members of paramilitary groups close to the government which left her in intensive care. The international community has condemned the attack.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117412″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Samira Sabou”][vc_custom_heading text=”Journalist and blogger” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:left”][vc_custom_heading text=”Samira Sabou is a Nigerien journalist, blogger and president of the Niger Bloggers for Active Citizenship Association (ABCA). In June 2020, Sabou was arrested and charged with defamation under the 2019 cybercrime law in connection with a Facebook post highlighting corruption. She spent over a month in detention before eventually being released.
Through her work with ABCA, she conducts training sessions on disseminating information on social media based on journalistic ethics. She teaches journalists and bloggers how to continue to publish despite a cybercrime law, enacted in 2019, which severely restricts freedom of expression in the country.
Sabou is also active in promoting girls’ and women’s right to free expression and has championed women’s leadership through her work.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Alegreya%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”117411″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/campaigns/letters-from-lukashenkas-prisoners/maria-kalesnikava/”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
