Angéla Kóczé Receives 2023 Beth Rickey Award from the Bard Center for the Study of Hate

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY — The Bard Center for the Study of Hate is proud to announce that Angéla Kóczé, assistant professor of Romani Studies, chair of Romani Studies Program, and academic director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University, Budapest, is the winner of the 2023 Beth Rickey Award. The award is given to a member of the Bard/OSUN Network community who has “taken sustained and effective action against hate [and whose] achievements can either be in scholarship, adding to our understanding of how hatred works, or actions, such as political organizing or media work.”
 
Dr. Kóczé has not only contributed to wider understandings of anti-Roma hate (and particularly hatred directed toward Roma women), but has also worked diligently inside and outside academia to bring attention to the dehumanization of and discrimination against Roma, and to help those afflicted by it. Roma (also known as “Gypsies”) are a people who have suffered persecution, and worse, throughout history. They were a victim of genocide by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Discrimination against them in Europe and elsewhere continues to this day, but is frequently ignored or condoned.
 
Dr. Kóczé, who is Roma, knows of the hatred she studies first-hand, having grown up in a poor family in a small town near the Hungarian-Ukrainian border. Kóczé, the only member of her family to have finished high school, set out to be a teacher, and became one. She continued her studies, receiving an M.A. in Human Rights and an M.A. in Sociology, Ethnic and Minority Studies, and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Anthropology.
 
She was a founding member of Romaversitias, which prepares Hungarian Roma students for university attendance. When the program started, only a handful of Roma students graduated university annually. Now, Dr. Kóczé, as chair of the CEU Romani Studies Program, has, “assisted hundreds of Roma students get the confidence and skills needed to join international academia and professional and non-profit sectors,” one of her colleagues said. 
 
In a profile of Dr. Kóczé ten years ago, the Washington Post noted her substantial contributions, including educating about anti-Roma stereotypes in the media and beyond, highlighting the problems of forced sterilization of Roma women, and calling attention to the segregation of Roma students in the educational system. In books, articles, and interviews, she raises deep questions about important issues, such as the difference between when Roma are considered an ethnicity or in racial terms, how “romanticized” views of Roma affect how they are treated in society, and the interplay between the strong community sense many Roma exhibit and their exclusion from society, both as cause and effect. She noted recently that, “in Hungarian politics, when the bad guys become demonized, rumors appear that they are Roma . . . it’s the kind of talk you hear in the hair salon.”

The annual Beth Rickey Award is given in memory of Elizabeth “Beth” Rickey, who died on September 12 in 2009. Rickey was a Republican State Committeewoman in Louisiana. Politically conservative, Rickey was appalled when neo-Nazi and former Klansman David Duke won elected office and devastated that many of her fellow Republicans in state government welcomed Duke into their midst. She made it her mission to expose Duke, following him to meetings with other white supremacists, showing that he continued to sell Mein Kampf and Holocaust-denying material from his legislative office. 

“Dr. Kóczé’s dedication to combating hate, both in forcing us to see and understand it through her academic work, and her dogged determination to help those directly afflicted by it, are the values and achievements we want to recognize and highlight,” said Kenneth S. Stern ’75, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate and a friend of Rickey’s. “Like Beth, Dr. Kóczé made a significant mark against hate, and we are thrilled to present this year’s award to her.”
   
The Bard Center for the Study of Hate (BCSH) works to increase the serious study of human hatred, and ways to combat it. The Beth Rickey Award is supported, in part, by people who worked with Beth Rickey (including academics and journalists), as well as The Southern Institute for Education and Research Archive. BCSH is a program of Bard’s Human Rights Project. For more information, visit bcsh.bard.edu.
  About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year, residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in more than 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 13 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 163-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
 

This event was last updated on 09-12-2023

Back to Top