The Dilemmas of a Hungarian University in Cluj (original) (raw)

2013, Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives. Comparisons and Entanglements, eds. Anders E. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, Balázs Trencsényi, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, Edit. Peter Lang, 2013, p.359-396

As institutions with real spiritual and social power that produce professional intellectuals, universities represent a complex eld of investigation. As a meeting point of most cultural aspirations, universities should be de ned through not only reference to certain ideal-abstract organizational types, but by the clientele they attract and the social functions they ful l. From this perspective, the choice of a certain higher education centre as well as the development of a typology of professional conduits, based on social-historical variables (ethnicity, religious denomination, social category, geographical origin, age, etc.), constitute privileged elements of analysis. An inquiry into higher education could be especially suggestive for the intra-Carpathian area which, throughout history, has known not only ethnic and religious pluralism, but also changes in political and state organization. rough such an inquiry more rigour can be brought to sometimes ambiguously formulated conclusions, which are, however, immediately annulled in the practice of in a-history, and which essentially claim that both in the periods-and-, ethnic and religious discrimination was practised at the University of Kolozsvár/Cluj, the institution acting as an ef cient instrument for the assimilation of Romanians-during the former period-and of Hungarians-during the latter. From this perspective, things appear much more complicated in the post-period, which has enjoyed very little attention. However, one fact remains irrefutable, namely that education (especially in its institutionalized form) has been a signi cant identity management strategy for every ethnic group. In this context, the transformations that the intellectual eld e research for this study was supported by CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-. 'Az Egyetem' , Kolozsvári újság, no. (May), .