On 3 November, 2017, the conference Politics and the University - Reception of Political Orientations and Ideas in the Thinking of University Youth 1780-1990 was held.
Historian János Ugrai, associate professor of the Károly Eszterházy University in Eger, gave a lecture entitled “Professionalism, science, critical thinking - the beginnings of political activity among university youth for two hundred years” in which he explained that after the Karlsbad resolutions (1819) the state power began to regard university student associations as active political actors.
Historian László Szögi, former director general of the University Library, presented the political activities of university student movements and associations between 1830 and 1880 in his lecture entitled “The Political Role of University and Academic Youth between 1830 and 1880”.
Historian-archivist Júlia Varga, chief archivist of the ELTE Archives, spoke about the conditions of the so far quite unknown Budapest University Circle in the last decade of the 19th century.
Historian Gábor Ujváry, head of the research group at the Veritas History Research Institute, spoke about the politicization of university associations in the 1930s and 1940s in his lecture entitled “Finding the way for university youth in the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s”.
Historian Róbert Kerepeszki, assistant professor at the University of Debrecen, discussed the effects of the First World War on university youth in his lecture entitled “The Impact of the Great War on Hungarian University Youth”.
The conference presentations were published in the 2nd issue of the journal Gerundium in 2018.