The passage of ‘Lex CEU’ in the spring of 2017 sent shockwaves through the academic community. The audacity with which the Hungarian government proposed, and with which the Hungarian assembly passed a law, aiming to stifle the academic operations of a university in an EU member state, was – for many of us – hard to fathom. Condemnations were swift, unequivocally denouncing the transparent attack on academic freedom. Yet, we are now witnesses that the strategy of the Hungarian government proved successful, as CEU has declared that it will move a major part of its operations to Vienna. Much exciting research has been produced (including in this journal) about the forces of democratic backsliding in Europe. These developments are not merely interesting research questions. They are intertwined with the fate of researchers and students, of authors, reviewers, and readers of this journal, of colleagues and friends. This led us to write a now shockingly banal ‘article’ in April 2017. To date the ‘article’ has over 72,000 views and an Altmetric score of over 900 which gives us hope that academic freedom has huge support. Alas, to our dismay, the original article is still timely, and hence part of this issue of JEPP.
