When the Central European University moved academic activities to Vienna, 130 miles west of the Austrian border, its then-rector, Michael Ignatieff, described it as “a dark day for freedom in Hungary and for academia.”
Someone with a different view of the powerful man’s crackdown on education is Vice President J.D. Vance, who was in Hungary this week trying to boost Orbán’s election campaign ahead of a key election on Sunday. Vance has advocated for Orbán to see what conservatives could achieve if they got tough on the liberal ideology prevalent in American colleges and universities.
Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio in 2024, said, “The closest conservatives have come so far to successfully dealing with left-wing dominance in universities is Viktor Orban’s approach in Hungary.” “I think their approach should be a model for us – not to abolish universities, but to give them a choice between survival or adopting a much less partisan approach to teaching.”
On a broader level, Sunday’s vote is not only an inflection point for Hungary, but also a key moment in the trajectory of Orbanism, and its potential to act as Washington’s hard-right ideological ally inside the EU, which both Orban and Vance regularly condemn.
Asked for comment, Vance’s office referred to his previous comments on the issue. The vice president discussed the idea again this week, saying at an Orbán rally in Budapest on Tuesday that “children should be able to go to school and be educated, not have to be taught.”
His host, Orbán, has long railed against the Central European University, accusing it of “fraud” by issuing both Hungarian and American qualifications and of using foreign funding to undercut domestic institutions and unduly interfere in Hungarian life.
In 1989, the Hungarian leader actually received a Soros Foundation scholarship to study at Britain’s Oxford University. But most of the Central European University’s criticism of Orbán has been directed personally at Soros, who is Jewish, often deploying anti-Semitic elements in his crusade against the billionaire philanthropist.
He has accused Soros of leading a “shadow army” of foreign-funded NGOs and civil society groups, and labeled them “vermin” who “have lived too long.” In portraying Soros as a “globalist”, he has used terminology adopted by conspiracy theorists in the United States and beyond. It says the university was eventually forced out after Orbán’s government passed laws demanding it comply with a series of practically impossible requirements.
Orbán’s office did not respond to requests for comment. He has previously denied allegations of anti-Semitism and has described Hungary as the safest place for Jews in what he has described as a European continent filled with anti-Semitic hatred. He points to his funding of a research institute to tackle that problem and his strong alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 2018, a year before the university moved its campus, the Soros Open Society Foundations moved its international operations from Budapest to Berlin, citing the “increasingly repressive political and legal environment” imposed by the Orbán regime.
Today’s Hungary is no longer considered a full democracy, but is classified as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” by the European Parliament, of which it is a member, which has squeezed the independence of its courts, media and other institutions.
For Republicans and Europe’s hard-right, Orbán is seen as a pioneer. Starting in 2022, a satellite Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is held every year in Hungary. And Orbán has credited himself with being involved in “program writing” for Trump’s policies and strategy.
This is a very worrying thing for Trump’s opponents.
In a speech last June, former President Barack Obama said Trump’s government “is not consistent with American democracy; it is consistent with autocracy. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán.”
Obama said the US “isn’t quite there yet, but I think we’re dangerously close to normalizing this kind of behavior.”
If Tisza party leader Peter Magyar wins on Sunday, he will be expected to fulfill his promises to restore the independence of education and other institutions.
Some observers are uncomfortable with the lack of specificity in his proposals.
Rights activist Pardawi said, “Peter Magyar has really given positive energy to a lot of people. They are moving away from disillusionment and apathy and speaking about politics but no longer in a calm tone.” But in terms of details, he said, “a lot is missing.”
On a bright, cool morning after Vance’s speech gave Orbán a boost, NBC News visited Central European University.
