The philanthropist and former financier George Soros has announced that he is to donate US$1 billion to fund a new global network of universities designed to promote liberal values and his vision of an open society.
In what he hailed as the “most important and enduring project of my life,” Soros said it was important to fund institutions that would help resist the drift toward growing authoritarianism in the US, Russia and China.
He also launched a fresh attack on US President Donald Trump, calling him a “con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him.”
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Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Soros said his new Open Society University Network (OSUN) would build on his Central European University (CEU), set up after the collapse of communism 30 years ago.
The CEU has been forced to move from Hungary to Vienna, Austria, after rightwing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stripped it of the ability to issue US degrees.
Soros said the CEU had not been strong enough by itself to become the educational institution the world requires.
“That requires a new kind of global educational network,” he said.
The time had come for his Open Society Foundation — the vehicle for his philanthropy — to embark on an ambitious project that would build on the CEU and develop “a new and innovative educational network that the world really needs,” he said.
“OSUN will be unique. It will offer an international platform for teaching and research. In the first phase it will connect closer together an existing network,” he said.
“In the second phase, we shall open up this network to other institutions who want to join and are eager and qualified to do so,” he said.
“To demonstrate our commitment to OSUN, we are contributing 1 billion dollars to it. But we can’t build a global network on our own; we will need partner institutions and supporters from all around the world to join us in this enterprise,” he added.
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