Soros-founded university says it has been kicked out of Hungary as an autocrat tightens his grip
December 3 at 12:12 PM
BERLIN — European Union leaders warned that it was a red line and dared Hungary not to cross it. The U.S. ambassador pegged the issue as his top priority. In the streets of Budapest, tens of thousands marched.
But in the end, there was nothing to stop Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who calls all the shots at home and increasingly does the same with his supposedly more powerful allies in the West — from driving Central European University into exile.
The school, established a quarter-century ago to educate a new generation of leaders and scholars after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, became on Monday the first university to be forced out of a European Union nation.
The ejection marked one of the surest signals to date of autocracy’s return to Hungary, and the region, after decades of relative freedom.
It also reflected a humbling for the West, which could not muster the strength to stand up to Orban. The Hungarian leader has made no secret that he wants to overturn the liberal international order from within and replace it with a system more akin to the illiberalism of Russia or China.
Arbitrary eviction of a reputable university is a flagrant violation of academic freedom,” the university said in announcing the move. “It is a dark day for Europe and a dark day for Hungary.”
The university’s exasperated president, Michael Ignatieff, said at a news conference that despite “many declarations and expressions of support” from U.S. and E.U. leaders, the West was ultimately toothless in defense of its principles.
“No leverage has been exerted on the government of Hungary from outside,” he said.
Reaction from E.U. officials Monday was muted. In an interview with The Washington Post last week, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David B. Cornstein confirmed that he had never tried to use either incentives or threats to sway Orban, despite proclaiming upon arrival in Budapest in June that his top mission was to keep CEU in the country.
With that effort having failed, he blamed the university’s founder — Hungarian American financier George Soros — for CEU’s departure and refused to criticize Orban.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/soros-founded-university-says-it-has-been-kicked-out-of-hungary-as-an-autocrat-tightens-his-grip/2018/12/03/26bdfc28-f6ed-11e8-8d64-4e79db33382f_story.html?utm_term=.5aaa331f9c0f