Modern Babel

The Faculty of Humanities of Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) is building bridges between Hungary and the world.

The Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) is celebrating the 375th anniversary of its foundation this year. A prominent intellectual power of Hungarian scholarly life, the university has been a center for educating Hungary’s intellectual elite for several centuries. Its Humanities Faculty is situated among historical walls and is attended by nearly 8,000 students.

“The Humanities Faculty is not just a school, but one of the most important intellectual, public and scholarly workshops of human sciences in Hungary”, Dean Dr. Tamás Dezsõ tells Diplomacy and Trade magazine. With its 16 institutes, 64 departments, 58 BA, 70 MA and 69 PhD programs, this Faculty is considered as the most significant and prestigious one in the country. “Our students do not only acquire the knowledge necessary to earn a degree, but they also strive to become the outstanding thinkers of the future Hungarian opinion-shaping human intellectuals. Our work also contributes to how Hungarian culture and the vision of human arts are formed in the long run. This is a huge responsibility on us”, Dezsõ adds. “Based on the official data released by the National Information Center of Higher Education and considering several statistics, the annual special edition of the prestigious weekly HVG has continuously ranked our Faculty absolute first on a list of 169 institutions.” The 58 major specializations of the Faculty offer the widest range of language courses including ones (e.g. Mongolian, Tibetan, etc.) that are not available anywhere else in Hungary.

Veritable Babel

“This is why statesmen, prime ministers and diplomats coming to Hungary have visited us, too”, says the Dean. Besides being the number one stronghold of Hungary’s literary, socio- cultural and historical knowledge, the Faculty of Humanities is the most eclectic and multicultural Faculty of the university. Walking around the campus, we meet students speaking foreign languages at every step. Why do so many foreigners choose this particular Faculty? “The Faculty of Humanities has contacts with more than 200 universities all over the world,” answers the Dean. “These relations are not limited to joint research and the exchange of lecturers. We send a large number of students to other European universities and nearly as many, if not more, are received by the Faculty. Students here not only come from Europe and the Middle East, but a whole influx of them from the Far East and America wish to take our degree courses at BA, MA and PhD levels. What they get here, is the highest level education in a welcoming country with rich historical traditions,” he adds.
“By teaching 60 languages, we bring almost all the cultures of the world to Hungary, and on the other hand, we also transmit Hungarian culture to the world”, continues the Dean. The Faculty, like a modern Babel, boasts of its linguistic diversity. However, here, the languages of the world do not coexist, as would be expcted, in a veritable Babel but in peaceful harmony. “We are proud to claim that almost every major language of the world has at least one skilled lecturer who can speak it, and there is at least one expert who can formulate his or her opinion on every major religion and civilization of the world,” the Dean notes. “Within the walls of the Faculty, the whole world appears to be a microcosm with its ideas and thoughts, social, literary, religious or otherwise.”

Gólyavár Nights

“During one of our recent events, Helja Misukka, State Secretary of the Finnish Ministry of Education gave a lecture, ‘University Reform in Finland – Towards Prominence’,” Dezsõ goes on.
“The challenges that the Finnish higher education faces are similar to those with whitch the Hungarian system is struggling. Hence, becoming acquainted with the Finnish reform of higher education gives us an opportunity to better understand and explain the Hungarian reforms, furthermore to see where we are headed for in the Bologna process after 2010.”
Similar conferences, such as our recent lecture on historical immigration to America, are regularly held in the course of what is known as Gólyavár Nights., where lectures on a variety of issues are delivered by professors and academics to a rapidly growing audience, consisting of students, colleagues and alumni.

Diplomacy course

There are not so many institutions of higher education that provide MA education on cultural diplomacy. “This is a special tailor-made program,” explains the Dean, adding that after mapping the demands, they recognized that there was a shortage of programs – theoretical and practical at the same time – which encompass several fields and disciplines. Cultural Diplomacy is a one-semester interdisciplinary program coordinated by the Department of American Studies, designed for MA students in English and American Studies as well as for international students who can learn the art of mediating between cultures.

Students will study basic facts, skills and vocabularies, drawn from several disciplines in the humanities to professionally interpret cultures. The program is geared toward teaching cultural mediation between Europe and the English speaking countries. This involves writing and speaking to an American audience about social, historical, political, literary or other issues that relate to some part of Europe and, vice versa, presenting American topics to European audiences. The program qualifies the students for very particular jobs and endeavors, such as cultural diplomacy, international journalism, international literary or art agency, professional, academic, or literary translation or simply fine conversationalists.

The syllabuses of the Middle East expert, etc. majors are designed in the similar way. Students enrolling this program might have the opportunity to attend lectures given by ambassadors.
This, too, enables us to expand our international relations and increase our reputation, as well as the competitiveness of our degrees in the world,” the Dean continues. “Our graduates leave the university with a thorough theoretical and practical academic background, which gives them value in the international labor market, and this is one of our major goals.”