Tuesday, 17. June 2025, 18:00 - 19:30

Yung Yidish Wien, Lilienbrunngasse 18, 1020 Vienna

In 1920, the Hungarian parliament introduced a Jewish quota for university admissions, making Hungary the first country in Europe to pass antisemitic legislation following World War I. Quotas explores the ideologies and practices of quota regimes and the ways quotas have been justified, implemented, challenged, and remembered from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. In particular, the volume focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, with chapters covering the origins of quotas, the moral, legal, and political arguments developed by their supporters and opponents, and the social and personal impact of these attempts to limit access to higher education.

The book will be presented by editors Judith Szapor and 
Michael L. Miller. The discussion is moderated by Éva Kovács.

The event is organised by the CEU Jewish Studies Program, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institue for Holocaust Studies and Yung Yidish in the framework of the Vienna Jewish Studies Colloquium.

Michael L. Miller is head of the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. He is the author of Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (2011) and other works on Habsburg and Habsburg-Jewish history. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled “Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.”

Judith Szapor is associate professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her latest monograph, Hungarian Women’s Activism in the Wake of the First World War: From Rights to Revanche was published in 2018. In her current project, she explores the intended and unintended impact of the numerus clausus on Hungarian Jewish women and families.

Éva Kovács, Prof. Dr., sociologist. Deputy director at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and also a Research Professor at the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest. Kovács studied sociology and economics at the Corvinus University in Budapest, PhD 1994, Habilitation 2009. Her research fields are the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, research on memory and remembrance, and Jewish identity in Hungary and Slovakia. She has authored five monographs, edited eleven volumes, published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, co-curated exhibitions in Budapest, Berlin, Bratislava, Krems, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. She is the founder of the audio-visual archive “Voices of the Twentieth Century” in Budapest.

No registration required!

By participating, you agree to the publication of photos, video and audio recordings made during the event.

In cooperation with: