Budapest Summit on The Values We Teach Our Children

Budapest Summit on The Values We Teach Our Children

MCC Budapest Summit on The Values We Teach Our Children

MCC (Tas vezér u. 3-7., H-1113, Budapest)

16-17 February, 2022

In this time of rapid social change, the question of how to handle ideological messages embedded into our children’s education is of growing concern.  From a young age, education plays a vital role in the socialization of the individual and in societal trends.  This topic has become an important area of interest for parents as well as researchers, professors, authors, and conservative academics.   Mathias Corvinus Collegium’s (MCC) Budapest Summit: On the Values We Teach Our Children aims to provide a public, professional forum for the discussion of this topic.

The focus of the conference — which consists of panel discussions, presentations, book presentations, discussion forums, and accompanying events throughout the week — is the role of education in shaping young people's self-awareness, thinking, and identity.  Should schools have any role in teaching children about gender or sexual orientation?  What will be the effects and consequences of modern ideologies espoused in schools today?  What is positive discrimination and what are its possible repercussions?  How can we equip our children with the critical thinking skills to respond to ever changing social standards?  The panel discussions and talks will focus on why it is important to introduce critical thinking in education, how to address issues of race and gender curriculum in education, the role of education in shaping national identity, and how rights and responsibilities are taught in schools. 

Registration for the conference is open.  We invite all those interested to attend the event.

 

 

 

Speakers

Visiting fellow at MCC

Dr. Miklos Lukacs de Pereny (Peru) is a Research Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Universidad de San Martín de Porres (USMP) in Lima, Peru. Before joining USMP, he was the Research Professor of Innovation Management at ESAN Graduate School of Business in Peru.  He has also held teaching posts at Essex Business School and Alliance Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom. He is one of the leading thinkers in science and technology studies in the Spanish speaking world and has amassed substantial amounts of followers across various social media platforms. His current research focuses on the ontological dimensions of transhumanism and the emerging field of biopolitical philosophy. He has attended academic conferences in Brazil, China, Cuba, England, France, Indonesia, Scotland, and Sweden, and has delivered presentations for universities, cultural foundations, political parties, and media platforms for more than 20 countries around the world. He has also worked as project consultant for international organizations such as the German Development Bank (KfW), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-UN) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Dr. Lukacs de Pereny holds a PhD in Management and a MSc in Innovation Management (University of Manchester, UK), a Master of Development Studies (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree (Universidad Mayor, Chile). He has also completed graduate studies in Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Program. He is a former UK FCO Chevening, NZAID, and ITEC scholar. The son of a Hungarian father and Peruvian mother, he currently resides with his family in the United Kingdom.

Head of the Center for European Studies at MCC

Rodrigo Ballester is the head of the Center for European Studies at MCC.  Rodrigo has extensive work experience (in several policy fields) in European Affairs and a solid horizontal knowledge of the European Union. He is a law graduate from the San Pablo University in Madrid and holds a Master in European Law (LL.M) from the College of Europe. He started his career as an academic assistant at the College of Europe for two years before moving into private practice as a lawyer in the American law firm Latham and Watkins. In the European Parliament he worked as an adviser for the Spanish Delegation of the European People’s Party (Partido Popular) in the fields of legal affairs, internal market, and home affairs. In 2008, he joined the European Commission, first in DG Justice, and transitioned in 2011 to DG Home Affairs where he was in charge of the external dimension of the EU’s migration policy in Morocco and Sub Saharan Africa. Starting in November 2014, he was a member of the Cabinet of Commissioner Navracsics. He was in charge of primary and secondary education and had a specific interest in the role of education to counter violent radicalization. He is an invited professor in the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and is currently employed at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium.

Philosopher, columnist and senior visiting fellow at MCC

Dr. Peter Boghossian is a Founding Faculty member at the University of Austin, Texas, a founder and Advisor to the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), a Visiting Fellow for Reason Foundation think tank, and the Director of National Progress Alliance

Peter’s work is centered around bringing the tools of professional philosophers to people in a wide variety of contexts and helping others think through what seem to be intractable problems. His dissertation explored how to increase the moral reasoning of prison inmates and aid their desistance from crime. His teaching pedigree, spanning more than 25 years, focused on the Socratic method, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and critical thinking. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and his most recent book, How to Have Impossible Conversations, is used in classrooms and companies throughout the world. Peter’s articles can be found in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Philosophers’ Magazine, Scientific American, Time Magazine, Skeptic, National Review, and elsewhere. Peter’s current work and activity can be found at SubstackTwitter, and his webpage.

President of the MOME Foundation

Gergely Böszörményi-Nagy is head of Design Terminal, Central Europe’s leading innovation agency. He is also the founder of Brain Bar, the biggest European festival on the future, and Chairman of the Board at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME). Gergely studied International Relations, earned his MBA at Central European University and participated in Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Executive Program inSocial Entrepreneurship. He is currently pursuing hisMaster of Scienceinurbanismat theLondon School of Economics. He was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 and Google's NewEurope100 list of emerging leaders and one of Central Europe’s most innovative leaders by Google, the Financial Times, and the International Visegrad Fund. 

Founder of the Fondation Kairos pour l'innovation éducative, diplomat, and activist

Anne Coffinier is a French social worker and founder of an NGO dedicated to the freedom of education and being able to choose one’s school. As the chairperson of the NGO “Creer son ecole”  (Create your school) founded  in 2005, she promotes the right of civil society to create, choose and develop its schools with as much freedom as possible. She claims that in a democracy one must uphold the diversity of educational needs and academic requirements.

Executive Director of the ADF International

Paul Coleman serves as executive director of ADF International from its headquarters in Vienna, overseeing the advocacy and operations of the global, alliance-building legal organization. Coleman earned his LL.M. and postgraduate diploma in legal practice, with distinction, from the Northumbria Law School and obtained a Bachelor of Law with first-class honors from Newcastle University. Specializing in international human rights and European law, Coleman has been involved in more than 20 cases before the European Court of Human Rights and has authored complaints and submissions to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, Court of Justice of the European Union, UN Human Rights Committee, and numerous national courts. Coleman is a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales and is the author of two books and numerous articles.

Author, journalist, cultural critic and psychiatrist

Anthony Malcolm Daniels, also known by his pen name “Theodore Dalrymple”, is an author, journalist, social critic, and physician. Daniels is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at the magazine City Journal. He is an author of many genres: travel guides, literary and social critical essays and multiple books. Such as Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the MassesSpoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality, and Life at the Bottom. He has written regularly for The Spectator, the British Medical Journal, Quadrant (Sydney), Revista Oeste (Sao Paulo), the New Criterion and the New English Review

Historian, columnist of The European Conservative

Hélène de Lauzun studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She was an assistant lecturer of French Literature at Harvard University and received her Ph.D. in Contemporary History from the Sorbonne Université. She specializes in Austrian history.  She is a trained dancer in the Viennese waltz at a professional level and is the president of the Bal des Parisiennes, the Viennese ball in Paris. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021), and currently works as a columnist for the quarterly journal The European Conservative.

Senior editor at The American Conservative, bestselling author, visiting fellow at MCC

Rod Dreher is a writer of non-fiction books and is senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. His writing focuses on the intersections among religion, culture, and politics. Dreher has been a columnist for the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, and National Review, among other publications. His books include two New York Times bestsellers The Benedict Option (2017) and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (2013), as well as volumes on topics as diverse as Dante Alighieri and traditional conservatism in the modern world. He lives in his native south Louisiana with his wife and children and is an Orthodox Christian. 

His latest book, New York Times bestseller “Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents”,  will be published in Hungarian during his stay.

Founder of the children' rights organization Them Before Us

Katy Faust is the founder and director of Them Before Us. She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College and then received a Fulbright scholarship to Taiwan. Her fluency in Mandarin assisted her when she worked with the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world. She publishes widely on the rights of children and is a regular contributor to The Federalist. Katy is the Washington State leader for the grass- roots marriage movement CanaVox, and currently appears in their video series “Dear Katy.” She is married to a pastor and the mother of four children, the youngest of whom is adopted from China. Her most recent book is called Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement.

Professor at the University of Kent, sociologist

Dr. Frank Füredi is an author, social commentator, and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Dr. Frank Füredi is also a Senior Research Fellow at XXIst Century Institute in Budapest. Dr. Furedi is an author of more than 25 books and his studies have been mostly devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments in western societies. In recent years he has published several studies on the impact of the culture wars on family life, socialization, education, and public life. In his most recent book, 100 Years of Identity Crisis, he argues that culture wars disrupt the socialization of young people and encourage the estrangement of generations from one another.

His research looks at the way risk and uncertainty are managed by contemporary culture. His two influential books, The Culture of Fear and Paranoid Parenting, investigate the interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations, and social capital in contemporary society. Füredi regularly comments on radio and television and the global media. In recent years, Füredi has published in The Australian, New Scientist, The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, The Express, the Daily Mail, the Wall Street Journal, India Today, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, Spiked-online, Harvard Business Review, and Die Welt amongst others.

Visiting fellow at MCC

Thibaud Gibelin is an MCC Visiting Fellow and is also currently enrolled in a doctoral thesis in political science at the University of Paris Est-Créteil. His research focuses on the reaffirmation of politics in Europe through recent developments in Hungary. In 2020, he published his first essay: Pourquoi Viktor Orbán joue et gagne (Why Viktor Orbán Plays and Wins) which was published by Fauves Editions. After studying history and political science, Thibaud Gibelin worked mainly in the European Parliament, but he also spent time working in Moscow and as a teacher in a private high school.

Executive Director at Créer son école-Educ'France (Create your own education), Strategy and Public Affairs Consultant

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Political philosopher, historian and Vice President of the Herzl Institute

Dr. Ofir Haivry is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Herzl Institute and the Director of its National Strategy Initiative. Dr. Ofir Haivry is also a member of the Israel State Council for Higher Education and co-founder of the Edmund Burke Foundation. He writes extensively on the history of political ideas and conservatism. His book John Selden and the Western Political Tradition, published with Cambridge University Press in 2017, offers a broad rethinking of the Anglo-American tradition of political philosophy. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. from University College London.

Head of the Center of Body and Soul at MCC

Melinda Hal is a psychologist, economist, and the head of the Center of Body and Soul at MCC.  Melinda Hal teaches at multiple Hungarian universities including Semmelweis University and the Pazmany Peter Catholic University. She also works as a psychologist in the psychiatry department of a hospital in Baja. Hal’s main area of research is ​​pain management.  Her research focuses on new ways to cure headaches.  She endeavors to help people with pain through basic and applied research as well as hands-on testing.

Opinion editor of Newsweek, and a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation

Josh Hammer is the Opinion Editor of Newsweek, a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation, a policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project, and a contributing editor for Anchoring Truths. Josh Hammer is also a constitutional attorney and simultaneously hosts two podcasts: Newsweek's "The Debate" and the Edmund Burke Foundation's "NatCon Squad."  His writings have been widely published in the Los Angeles Times, the New York PostNewsweekNational AffairsAmerican Affairs, the National InterestNational ReviewFirst ThingsCity JournalPublic DiscourseTablet MagazineDeseret MagazineThe SpectatorThe American Mind, and the American Conservative. Josh graduated from Duke University where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School.

Head of the Media School at MCC

Boris Kálnoky is the head of MCC’s Media School. After graduating from university in Paris, he studied politics and history in Hamburg and then joined the editorial staff of the German daily Die Welt in 1987. He became the Balkans Correspondent for Die Welt, a position based in Budapest, and then moved to Istanbul where he served as the Middle East correspondent. He is the author of Ahnenland (Droemer Verlag, Munich, 2011), a book about what happened to his family in Hungary since 1952. He has an extensive experience working as a freelancer.  In addition to Die Welt, he also writes for a number of other media outlets in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. He cannot live without writing and is eager to share this passion also with his students at Mathias Corvinus Collegium.

Linguist, classicist, professor at Princeton University

Dr. Joshua Katz is Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Princeton University, where he is also a faculty associate of the James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions. He is a Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Barry Scholarship Program. He holds degrees in Linguistics from Yale (BA), Oxford (M.Phil), and Harvard (PhD). He has taught at Princeton since 1998 and is the recipient of numerous awards for both his teaching and his scholarship on the languages, literatures, and cultures of the ancient world from India to Ireland to Greece, Rome, and the Near East. He is especially fond of etymology, language games, and—very broadly—the history of ideas, while finding himself wading every more into contemporary hot-button sociopolitical issues. He has received numerous prizes for his scholarship and pedagogy, and he was named a 2020 Hero of Intellectual Freedom by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. His recent publications have appeared in First Things, Law & Liberty, The National Review, The New Criterion (where he will serve as a Visiting Critic in 2022–23), Public Discourse, Quillette, SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations, The Spectator (World), The Times Literary Supplement, and The Wall Street Journal.

Director of Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Center of Independent Studies, Adjunct Associate Professor in the University of Notre Dame Australia

Peter Kurti is the Director of Culture, Prosperity, & Civil Society program at the Center of Independent Studies. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the School of Law at the University of Notre Dame Australia, and an adjunct research fellow at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture at Charles Sturt University. He has written extensively about issues of religion, liberty, and civil society in Australia, and appears frequently as a commentator on television and radio. In addition to having written many newspaper articles, he is also the author of The Tyranny of Tolerance: Threats to Religious Liberty in Australia, Euthanasia: Putting the Culture to Death?, and Sacred & Profane: Faith and Belief in a Secular Society, published by Connor Court. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an ordained minister in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Professor, member of the Board of Trustees of MCC

Dr. András Lánczi is a Hungarian conservative philosopher, political scientist, university professor, former rector of the Corvinus University of Budapest, and current the member of the Board of Trustees at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. He has a degree in English-History from Eötvös Loránd University and received his PhD at the Corvinus University of Budapest, where he started teaching as an associate professor at the Departments of Political Sciences, later becoming the head of department and director. He received a Széchenyi Professorial Scholarship and was teaching in several Hungarian universities, as well as at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna. He has held positions at different foundations and organizations, such as Center for European Renewal, “Nézőpont”, “Századvég” and “XXI. Század Intézet”. He is the author and editor of several books and scientific articles, and he is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he was awarded the István Bibó Prize by the Hungarian Political Science Society, and in 2009 he received the Gold Medal of the Corvinus University of Budapest. His research interests include political philosophy, the epistemological issues of political knowledge, theories of democracy, and feminism.

Edtitor-in-chief of ELLE

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New York Times bestselling author, fellow at the Manhattan Institute

Dr. Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of the City Journal, and New York Times bestselling author. Dr. Heather Mac Donald is also a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Her writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Her most recent book The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture states that toxic ideas (first fueled by higher education) have undermined humanistic values and widened divisions in society. She has an M.A. in English from Cambridge University and J.D. from Stanford University Law School. United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions has once called Mac Donald the “greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.”

Visiting fellow at MCC and Danube Institute

Dr. Calum Nicholson is a joint visiting fellow at MCC and the Danube Institute. Dr Calum T. M. Nicholson studied social anthropology at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, was awarded an MPhil in Migration Studies from St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, and holds a PhD in human geography. He has conducted original research that reconsiders how humans understand the societal implications of climate change, particularly in the context of its relationship to human migration and international development.  A former Parliamentary researcher and development consultant, Dr Nicholson teaches courses at the University of Cambridge on international development, international migration, and the politics of climate change. At Cambridge, Dr. Nicholson also teaches a well-received course on the political, cultural, and historical significance of social media, which he is currently turning into a book.

Political commentator and journalist

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Chairman of the Board of Trustees of MCC

 

Political Director to the Prime Minister, Chairman of the board at Mathias Corvinus Collegium and Minister of State at the Prime Minister’s Office. Balázs Orbán is a university lecturer, lawyer, researcher and political scientist. He has recently published  the book “Hungarian Way of Strategy.” The Hungarian Way of Strategy offers a unique view on government thinking, drawing on extensive scholarship as well as a range of examples from history and popular culture. Balázs Orbán provides readers unfamiliar with Hungary’s unique geography and history an understanding of how these factors continue to shape Hungarian thinking as he explains strategic planning, national character, and debunks misconceptions fostered by Western media about the nature and aims of Hungary’s government. 

Head of the foreign desk and Senior Editor at the Hungarian conservative daily newspaper Magyar Hírlap

Mariann Őry is the head of the foreign desk and Senior Editor at the Hungarian conservative daily newspaper Magyar Hírlap. Mariann Őry’s work focuses on EU and V4 affairs.  She also closely follows the cooperation between those who represent sovereignist positions in Europe. Őry's op-eds have appeared in several foreign outlets including the American Conservative and Junge Freiheit. She has a BA in Scandinavian studies and completed the postgraduate Women Public Leadership Training Programme at MCC.

Associate professor at University of Dallas, senior visiting fellow at MCC

Gladden Pappin is assistant professor of politics at the University of Dallas. He is also the cofounder and Deputy Editor of American Affairs, as well as a senior adviser and permanent research fellow at the University of Notre Dame de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. He received his AB in history (2004) and his AM and PhD in government (2012) from Harvard University where his AB thesis received the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he is a sixth-generation citizen of the Osage Nation. Since 2017 he is also a Knight of Magistral Grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He writes on the contemporary politics of the United States and Europe, as well as the intellectual history of modern liberalism and its relationship to ecclesiastical institutions. He currently resides in Budapest with his wife Jeanette and their two children.

Senior Visiting Fellow at MCC, professor of “Political Systems and Comparative Analysis” at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany

Dr. Werner J. Patzelt is an experienced professor, researcher, commentator, and prolific writer.  After having received his academic education at the universities of Munich, Strasbourg and Ann Arbor / Michigan, he earned his PhD from Passau University 1984, where he then started his academic career.  Apart from Passau and Dresden, he has taught at the universities of Paris (École pratique de hautes études), Moscow (Higher School of Economics), and at summer schools of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in Ankara, Antalya, Mexico City, Naples, Stellenbosch, and St. Petersburg. From 1991 to 2019 he served as full professor of Political Systems and Comparative Analysis at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. From 2009 to 2014 he was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association.  He has served as IPSA’s summer school coordinator since 2016.

His research interests include legislatures, political parties, political culture, political communication, comparative historical political systems, evolutionary institutionalism, and social science epistemology & methodology. He is co-editor of the book series Studien zur Parlamentarismusforschung [Studies in parliamentary research] and a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen [Journal of parliamentary affairs].  He is an active commentator of ongoing political events in newspapers, on radio, and on tv.

In addition to some 80+ casual scientific texts, and 300+ journalistic articles and interviews, he has published roughly 100 articles in professional journals and an estimated 250 book chapters. They cover numerous topics of legislative research in a broad sense, political culture, populism, and evolutionary theory in the social sciences, often in a comparative perspective.  He has been the recipient of various awards including the 1984 Cultural Award of Eastern Bavaria for the PhD-dissertation “Foundations of Ethnomethodology” and the 1994 Science Award of the Deutsche Bundestag for the habilitation thesis “Members of Parliament and Representation.”

Head of the Leadership Academy at MCC

Imre Porkoláb is an expert in organizational innovation, an ex-soldier, and the head of the Leadership Academy at MCC. Imre Porkoláb graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and began his career as a soldier in 2003 serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since July 2011 he has served NATO’s Strategic Transformation Command, collaborating with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, and key institutes in Washington. During his stay in the U.S. he completed a senior management course at Harvard University and a degree in organizational innovation at Stanford University. He researches,  writes, and gives lectures on successful change management and innovative methods of organizational transformation and their applications in business. Porkoláb’s first book Serve to Lead was published in 2016; his second book, The Art of Strategy, was published in 2019. 

President of Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, Senior Fellow in the Common Sense Society

Dr. Aaron Rhodes is a human rights advocate and writer. He is a senior fellow at the Common Sense Society and President of the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe. He was Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights 1993-2007, and also a co-founder of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Rhodes was born in upstate New York. He was educated at Reed College and at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a PhD in the Committee on Social Thought. He is the author of over 100 articles, as well as the book The Debasement of Human Rights (Encounter Books). He lives in Hamburg, Germany with his family.

Head of the Center for International Law at MCC

Lénárd Sándor JD, MBA is a graduate of Pázmány Péter Catholic University where he received his JD in 2006. Subsequently, he took the Hungarian bar exam in 2010. He is also a graduate of Canisius College in Buffalo, New York where he received an MBA in 2011. After graduation served at the Office of the Attorney General until 2011 and since then he has worked for the Constitutional Court of Hungary as a chief council. He teaches international public law, international human rights law, and international economic and investment law at the Faculty Law and Political Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University. He also delivers lectures on actual public policy questions of international investment law at foreign universities. He is author of nearly 100 opinion and analytical articles on decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as on more general American public policy questions.  Additionally, he has helped to translate and edit numerous books on the history, political philosophies, and public policies of the United States.

Co-editor of "What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth"

Dr. Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a teacher, independent researcher, and writer on education. She has a Master’s in Cultural Studies, a Master’s in Education Research, and currently she is completing her PhD at Cambridge University on nature and the role of knowledge in education, and its redefinition in late 20th century. She works as Director and Head of Education for the campaign Don't Divide Us. She is also an educational advisor and writes regularly on education for both public and academic publications. She is co-editor and contributor of What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth (UCL Press) and contributor to Moral and Political Discourses in Philosophy of Education (Routledge India). Her research interests are liberal education (philosophy), education and democracy (sociology), and aesthetics.

Director of the Learning Institute at MCC

János Setényi is a consultant, researcher, and the Director of the Learning Institute at MCC. János Setényi studied at the ELTE Faculty of Humanities and participated in a training program at the University of Helsinki. He graduated as a historian and received his doctorate degree in education at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is a generalist in all sectors of education, but his main field of interest is policy-making. He has developed a strong international professional network and has regularly worked on projects for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the Council of Europe and the EU Directorate-General for Employment over the last 25 years. Through his ongoing consultancy work, he has gained extensive experience in education development in the Balkans and the post-Soviet region.

In 1995, he founded one of the first for-profit educational consultancy companies in Central Europe, Expanzió Consulting Ltd. Since the turn of the millennium, his interest has focused on evaluation from policy level to an institutional and even training program level. In the last decade, he has turned his interest towards digitalization, learning industry innovations and disruptive technologies, and his research focuses on new system integration models for traditional schooling. He is a proficient speaker of the English and Finnish languages and an intermediate speaker of Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

Author of "The New College Reality" and "Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—And What We Can Do About It"

Dr. Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder is an American educator with 20+ years of experience in a variety of roles at different institutions including teacher, counselor, administrator, and professor in both public and private schools. Bonnie is an honors graduate of Harvard University with a Master’s in Counseling from Virginia Tech and a Doctorate in Higher Education from Penn State University. She is an author of several books on education including The New College Reality, Finding Your Voice: A Free Speech Comic, and Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—And What We Can Do About It.

Government Commissioner of Hungary

Dr. István Stumpf is a Hungarian lawyer, political scientist, sociologist, university professor with a political science PhD, former constitutional judge at the Constitutional Court of Hungary, and is currently Government Commissioner. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Law, then he worked as an assistant professor (later associate professor) at the Legal Theory Department, in addition to receiving a second degree in sociology. In the following years he studied in the United States with a German Marshall scholarship and IREX scholarship (Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, George Washington University). He received his PhD in political science from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence, Institute for Political Science, where he has been a senior researcher for the Center for Social Sciences. He habilitated at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Law and Political Science, later became an associate habil. He is also a professor at Széchenyi István University. Furthermore, he teaches different courses in law and political science at several Hungarian universities. He was the founder of the "Századvég" Fin-de-siecle foundation, and the founding editor of its journal. From 2010 to 2019 he served as a constitutional judge at the Constitutional Court of Hungary. Currently, he is the Government Commissioner of Hungary responsible for the model change of universities, and is also a member of the Government Committee for Rural Development. He is the recipient of several awards including the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, Grand Cross Star and the István Bibó award, Award of the Hungarian Political Science Society.

Head of the Center for Public Law at MCC

Márton Sulyok is an assistant professor at the Institute of Public Law of the University of Szeged (SZTE), lawyer, legal translator, and the head of the Center for Public Law at MCC.  Márton Sulyok holds a PhD in Political Science and Law and his main research areas are human rights systems, the applicability of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in Member States, constitutional identity, and comparative constitutional law.  He obtained a diploma in American law from the SZTE ÁJTK (SZTE Faculty of Law and Political Sciences) and the University of Toledo (OH) College of Law. In the mid-2000s, he participated in research trips to Belgium and France thanks to several state scholarships (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Facultés Universitaires Notre Dame de la Paix, Namur). In addition to his university work, he has worked as a professional translator in the private sector. Recently, he has done professional translation work for several Hungarian state bodies including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Ministry of Justice.

senior journalist at Mandiner, author of The Criticism of Gender Theory

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Minister of Justice

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Author of "Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity" and "Women vs Feminism"

Dr. Joanna Williams is the founder and director of Cieo. Joanna Williams taught at the University of Kent for over ten years and was the director of Kent’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Most recently, she worked as Head of Education and Culture at Policy Exchange. Joanna is the author of Women vs. Feminism (2017); Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (2016) and Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can’t Be Bought (2011). Joanna is a weekly columnist for the online magazine Spiked and writes regularly for numerous other publications including The Times, The Spectator, Russia Today, American Conservative, and the Daily Mail.

Professor at University of Augsburg

Dr. Klaus Wolf is a professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Augsburg. Dr. Klaus Wolf has written and published extensively in German and is especially interested in researching medieval German Literature, history in the Bavaria region, and German history in general. In 2019 he received the prize for teaching excellence at the University of Augsburg.