BY HANK REICHMAN
Even as the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, struggles to survive, another independent university in Budapest may pick up stakes and move in the face of continued hostility from the right-wing nationalist government of Viktor Orban. “We can’t go into another academic year like this. We’re in a holding pattern but it’s not going to go on too much longer,” said Michael Ignatieff, rector of Central European University (CEU). Ignatieff said the university had demanded a resolution by the start of the new academic year, and that if the government refused to sign, it would be forced to move much of its operations to Vienna. “You can’t run a university in legal limbo, and you can’t have academic freedom without the rule of law,” he said.
Meanwhile, the journal Science this month reported that “Hungarian scientists also worry that their main grant-funding body, praised for its independence and transparency in a recent European review, has become replaced by an agency more susceptible to political influence. And some researchers believe the government is increasingly wasting scarce funds on scholarship that promotes a particular agenda or controversial theories of national origin.”
When the Hungarian government moved against CEU last year, saying it violated Hungarian law, mass protests in Budapest and support from foreign capitals prompted a rare retreat from Orbán. However, a final settlement was not reached.
Hungary’s new parliament — in which Orban’s Fidesz party gained a two-thirds parliamentary majority last month — is expected to pass the so-called “Stop Soros” law in the coming weeks. The bill is targeted at what the government claims is a campaign by the Hungarian-born American financier George Soros to undermine the country and promote immigration. Civil society groups say it will make the work of NGOs dealing with migration issues impossible. The law will not target CEU, but the university was founded by Soros and is frequently referred to by government-controlled media as an anti-government institution. This week Soros’s Open Society Foundations formally announced they will move their Budapest office to Berlin, confirming earlier rumors.
An agreement to save CEU appeared to be reached last September, but the Hungarian government has yet to sign off on it. Ignatieff said CEU had done everything to comply with the government’s requests, including opening a U.S. campus. “We’ve met our obligations and it’s now time for them to meet theirs,” he added. In the days after the election result, Orbán refused to rule out shutting down the university, saying he had not yet discussed the issue with the new government.
Ignatieff expressed sympathy with the NGOs affected by the “Stop Soros” laws, but claimed CEU’s fight was different. “Our purpose is not to hold the government to account. That’s not what universities do. Our mission has always been to teach people to be free: meaning skeptical, dispassionate, knowledgeable, smart and hardworking. The symbolic issue is whether there is space for a free institution in this kind of society … That’s a decision for the government, and it is a decision that will have huge ramifications for what Hungary is.”
The Guardian reports that “CEU professors are already scoping out Vienna ahead of a potential move, and Ignatieff said he was willing to move the center of operations to the Austrian capital if the Hungarian government refused to sign the deal in the coming months.”
