We share a bittersweet news with you today as Gábor Tóka decided to discontinue the teaching at our department from September 2020, however, he will not leave CEU completely behind as he will continue his work as a Senior Research Fellow in the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives. Let us thank Gabor for his nearly three decades of teaching at our department as well as for his hard work and dedication. We wish him all the best with his new position.
Please read Gabor's farewell message:
"Dear Colleagues,
I hope you are all safe and healthy, and enjoy the extra opportunity for reflection that the Vienna move, the global pandemic, and the recent changes of Hungarian law gave us. As for me, I am uncertain about, but really intrigued by the consequences of the last two. The first, in turn, made me realize that the coming years can probably be the most productive ones of my remaining life, and I’d rather spend them with rounding up some projects that I started a long time ago, even if this requires me to discontinue the personally very rewarding teaching that I was fortunate to do at the CEU for a long time.
I discussed plans with various people at the university, further developed some details in discussion with the director of the OSA and a few data archivists, and found all of them very supportive of my idea for a long-term project. All in all, I decided that from September 2020 I would like to continue my work as a Senior Research Fellow in the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (http://www.osaarchivum.org/). The university leadership kindly and unanimously approved the proposal, as well as a search for my replacement.
Now I would just like to thank everyone with whom we started the department in 1992/93 for the exceptional opportunity for learning and work that the environment gave me in Úri utca, Hűvösvölgyi út, and eventually Nádor utca. It would be hard to detail and acknowledge appropriately the difference this made in my life. I hope to have paid back my dues since, and feel confident to have found the best way that my assets can still serve the mission that we signed up to back then. I would also thank all of you for the comradery that we shared over the years, and all students and alumni that I worked with for the joy and lasting benefits of interacting with such a talented, diverse and motivated group of people. Hopefully, I will still be able to help in what I wish to be a very bright and long future of CEU in Vienna even though I will not participate in planning and delivering the curriculum any longer. All the previous moves allowed the campus to become both architecturally and intellectually more attractive, and no doubt this will happen at the Otto-Wagner-Spital site too.
Since many details are yet to be sorted, I cannot share a project description at this point, but essentially I will be the curator and researcher of a collection and catalogue of political opinion research in East Central and South Eastern Europe that should in time also become a major resource for research and thesis writing among students and faculty across many CEU departments. Hence I really hope that we at the OSA can have some fruitful collaboration with you in the not too distant future.
Best regards,
Gabor"