In 2014, in cooperation with the Action and Protection Foundation, Kristóf Bodó, a practicing lawyer, and I had the opportunity to teach a course titled The Background and Social Consequences of Hate Crimes at the University of Public Service for students in the Faculty of Law Enforcement, Public Administration, and Military Sciences. The opportunity was exceptional indeed, since teaching about hate crimes in Hungary is rarely present, especially not in an institutional environment. However, this would be generally important, especially in university programmes where students are likely to encounter minority group members, human rights issues, and possible hate crimes in their future profession. All the students of the course belong to this group. The main aim of this article is to present this pilot course. To achieve this goal, I describe the pedagogical context first, then the social context and the prejudices present in Hungarian society. The aim of the first section is to place the course described within the context of human rights education using the concept and a typology of affective education. In talking about the latter, the trends of prejudice against the most vulnerable minorities are presented, and hate crimes and incidents committed in Hungary are also described. After introducing the context, the article presents the whole process from planning the curriculum to the realization of the course with all its experiences and challenges. After evaluating the experience some future prospects are presented.
