The Baker-Nord Center for Humanities will present The Joseph and Violet Magyar Lecture in Hungarian Studies Thursday, April 9, at 4:30 p.m. in Clark Hall, Room 309.
Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values and director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University, will give a lecture titled “Counter-Constitutions: How a 21st Century Constitutional Revolution in Hungary Claimed Medieval Roots.”
Since independence in 1989, nationalist Hungarians have argued that the Holy Crown of St. Stephen and associated doctrines should be at the core of Hungary’s constitution. Scheppele will discuss how the crown is both a literal object given by the Pope to the first Christian king of Hungary, in the year 1000 and—since medieval times—a key symbolic touchstone in the constitution of state power.
Scheppele will examine how the crown became an object venerated by the right and denigrated by the left of the Hungarian political spectrum.
The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. Registration for the event is available online at humanities.case.edu/wpgforms/registration-for-counter-consititutions/.