Hungary might approve a new law that could force a university founded by financier George Soros out of the country, despite a protest against the plan in Budapest and condemnation abroad.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch critic of liberal civil organizations funded by Soros, on Friday last week said that Central European University (CEU) had violated regulations in awarding its diplomas, an allegation the college firmly rejected as false.
The university, which was founded in Budapest in 1991 and has 1,400 students, said it operated lawfully and was accredited to award Hungarian and US degrees.
Thousands of students, professors and supporters on Sunday rallied in Budapest demanding that the government withdraw the draft legislation, which they called an attack on freedom of education.
Orban’s government, which faces an election in just more than a year, last week submitted a bill to the Hungarian Diet to regulate foreign universities by setting several new requirements, which could force the school to leave Hungary.
Foreign universities must have a campus in Budapest and in their home country under the new bill.
CEU, which only operates in the capital, is the only international college with no arm elsewhere.
A new passage in the bill also stipulates that foreign universities could award degrees in Hungary only if the governments of Hungary — and in CEU’s case, the US — sign an accord on the matter within six months of the law taking effect.
More than 500 leading international academics, including 17 Nobel Laureates, have come out in support of the university, saying that it was one of the preeminent centers of thought in the country.
The US Department of State last week said that CEU is a “premier academic institution” that promoted academic excellence and critical thinking, and urged the government “to avoid taking any legislative action that would compromise CEU’s operations or independence.”
Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which supports democracy, has over the past three decades been active in Hungary and Soros has financed foreign scholarships for Fidesz politicians, including Orban, after communism’s collapse.
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