Soros-founded university says it has been kicked out of Hungary as an autocrat tightens... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...8-8d64-4e79db33382f_story.html
university hungary autocrat crisis culture politics
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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.
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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. Cornstein also minimized the university’s importance — and appeared baffled by why the school’s fate had generated wider interest. “It doesn’t have anything to do with academic freedom,” Cornstein said.
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CEU has long been considered among the world’s finest graduate schools, attracting students from across the globe, and it is widely seen as the best in Hungary.
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But for nearly two years, the university also has been the target of harassment by a right-wing government that has systematically consolidated control and marginalized dissent
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The university, which has dual accreditation in Hungary and the United States, has enjoyed robust, bipartisan backing in Congress, where members expressed concern about the threat to academic freedom and the precedent of a U.S. institution being kicked out by an American ally.
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But last week, after it became clear that there would be no deal, Cornstein broke with previous U.S. policy on the matter. In the half-hour interview, he described Orban as his “friend” and accused Soros of being insufficiently acquiescent to the government.
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Cornstein — an 80-year-old New Yorker who made his fortune in the jewelry, gambling and telemarketing businesses and is a close friend of President Trump’s — compared the university’s plight to his own experience selling jewelry at department stores.
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“I was a guest in another guy’s store,” Cornstein said. “The university is in another country. It would pay to work with the government.
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Kati Marton, a university trustee and Hungarian American author, described Cornstein’s comments as “the end of America as a defender of academic freedom. It’s a betrayal.”
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The Hungarian government’s campaign against CEU began in early 2017, soon after Trump’s inauguration. Legislation passed that spring by parliament appeared to specifically target the university by requiring all foreign-based schools in Hungary to also have academic programs in their home countries
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CEU created a program at Bard College in New York, and it was certified by state authorities. But the Hungarian government did not acknowledge the arrangement, and officials signaled last month that they never would because the university had not complied with all aspects of the law. They have declined to spell out publicly exactly how
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Zalan Jakab, a 23-year-old Hungarian who was among the students protesting, said that in his home region, the vast majority of people hear little about the university beyond government propaganda. As a result, they regard CEU “as an evil place.