Protests took place in Hungary on 9 April in support of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, which is under threat of closure due to new rules passed by the Hungarian Parliament. Michael Stewart argues that the government’s actions reflect Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s personal and ideological antipathy toward CEU’s founder, George Soros, and that the closure of the university would be a tragedy for both Hungary and the rest of Europe.
Credit: CEU / Zoltan Tuba (CC BY SA 2.0)
If guests ever questioned the significance of a university to its founder, the former President and Rector of Central European University (CEU), John Shattuck, liked to remind them that unlike most human institutions, universities can boast longevity. Which significant institutions live on, he would ask, from the years of renaissance glory in Florence, Venice or Padua? Their universities. Or, to put the matter in more familiar terms, what other British corporation founded in 1421 survives and thrives 600 years on, as does King’s College Cambridge?
But after recent news from Budapest, it may be that the distinguished diplomat and former head of Harvard Library, spoke too soon. On 4 April, the Hungarian parliament passed an amendment to its Education Bill which is expressly and solely intended to close CEU, the most successful university in Central and Eastern Europe.
The act of parliament – now popularly known in Hungary as Lex CEU – has already provoked outrage across Europe and the world with hundreds of academics signing the main petition including 20 Nobel Laureates. It is to all appearances a self-harming act, with both the European Commissioner for Culture, Tibor Navrocsics (a Hungarian government appointee, as it happens), and leading conservative Hungarian academics including László Lovász, president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, standing by CEU.
So, what on earth is going on? According to Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, talking on his Friday morning Radio show, CEU has been ‘cheating’ the system. The new Act – the relevant clauses of which were published late on a Friday night less than two weeks before the vote and were then debated in parliament in an accelerated procedure – re-establishes ‘the law’ that foreign universities operating in Hungary must have a fully operational campus in their home country. Something is wrong here in that CEU is a both an institution domiciled in the State of New York and a fully accredited Hungarian University. At the time of the onerous and bureaucratically watertight Hungarian accreditation procedure – under Mr Orbán’s administration – no one noticed that CEU had been acting illegally.
Some interpreters believe that Mr Orbán meant to say that since most of CEU’s master degrees are awarded after one year of study (unlike most Hungarian Universities that demand two years [the UK has had exceptional status in Europe for many years]) CEU is competing unfairly (‘cheating’) against local competitors. But this does not make sense since those who are losing out in the supposed competition are not complaining.
CEU has the best library in the region and allows Hungarian university staff and students to use it, and the university maintains outstanding relations with its Hungarian neighbours who recognise it as the main site through which Hungarian Higher Education finds a window to the wider world. Numerous joint research projects are currently running and the university provides a welcome home to star Hungarian academics seeking a return home, like the world leading network scientist, Albert-László Barabási, inventor of the scale-free network concept, or the world class team that lead Cognitive Science there.
So, the puzzle remains. Now, it is famously difficult today to work out what the Hungarian government’s next moves are in any particular field. With a strangulated media, an enfeebled opposition, and a political elite held hostage by an apparently unbeatable premier, analysts are reduced to speculating about the mental disposition of the erratic Mr Orbán. For what is certain is that nothing gets done by his government without his express permission. But there are reasons to think that the Hungarian government is seriously intent on wounding or even killing off CEU – at least in its Hungarian embodiment.
Key to the issue is the personal and ideological antipathy the Hungarian Prime Minister and his circle bear toward CEU’s founder, George Soros. Soros’ endowment of CEU – to the tune of over $880 million – makes it Europe’s richest university and so a powerful and independent force. As a private university, moreover, its governance lies beyond Orbán’s famously meddling hands.
Zoltán Balog, whose Ministry of Human Capacities covers much of the Hungarian state administration, told parliament: “The existence of a strong, autonomous and internationally-recognised university is in Hungary’s interests. But it is not in our interests to have players in the background who are conspiring against the democratically elected government or for example to support Soros-organisations. Soros’s organisations are not above the law.” The former Presbyterian minister then added that George Soros was engaged in a “worldwide smear campaign” against Hungary, noting that the current bill, or presumably the opposition to it, would “uncover the power of the network.”
Mr Orbán has proclaimed that he is building a European version of the ‘illiberal democracy’ championed by Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. This represents the literal inversion of the Popperian Open Society that Soros’ NGO network and his university has championed and promoted. Mr Orbán’s vision is for a national ‘social’ democracy with a strong, interventionist state and open preference for ethnic compatriots in all public matters.
Only a few days before the vote, Orbán had said he wants to see only Hungarians in Hungary. CEU, an institution with faculty from 30 countries and students from over 100 countries, represents all that the Orbánistas disdain. Worse, with this profile and teaching only in English, the graduate only university sits in the top 200 universities worldwide, with its best departments in the top 50. Not one of the Hungarian language universities today reaches into the world’s top 500. To a heartfelt ethnic patriot and passionate Hungarian nationalist this hurts. More, it represents a challenge to the very ideology he espouses.
While trumpeting at full volume their own anti-communism (many of Mr Orbán’s economic policies are designed to ‘steal back from the communists all they stole from us’), the style in which they conduct politics smells of nothing so much as the Bolshevik rulers of the region. Since 2010, Orbán’s government has, inter alia, devised a law formally designed to lower top civil servants’ salaries to squeeze out the independent head of the National Bank; used retirement legislation to force out disloyal elder judges from the judiciary; through dubious financial means closed overnight the leading opposition paper, Népszabadság; and through administrative pressure brought cultural institutions, local governments and even schools under the fist of the government.
Universities represent a last bastion of free thought. And CEU sits on top of the pile. Indeed, it has been one of the sites where young thinkers from around the region have met, talked together, and tried to work out how to take the transformation promised in 1990 through to its conclusion. The higher echelons of Ukrainian and Georgian civil services and political life have a disproportionate number of CEU graduates, as do those of the former Yugoslav states. Three weeks ago, Mr Putin shut down the European University in St Petersburg by executive order. He and Mr Orbán are famously close, though it is not likely that they have formally coordinated their moves.
Many commentators have been worrying over a Le Pen presidency in France, but in Mr Orbán, the European Union has already met its nemesis. A revanchist, ethno-nationalist authoritarian is now openly challenging the ‘liberal values’ that the British prime minister extols at the heart of our continent’s modern history. Or, as the conservative Hungarian political scientist, Zoltán Balázs – who happens to be an Orbán supporter and an elected deputy Mayor of Budapest’s XV district – put it in an interview, “if the government gets its way, Hungary will become “a darker, more balkanic country of less interest to the west and, from a social, economic and scientific point of view, we will slide back into the ranks of countries that can barely even claim to be ‘also rans’.”
It would be a tragedy for Hungary and the whole of European public life were Mr Orbán to win this battle.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Michael Stewart – University College London
Michael Stewart is Professor of Anthropology, UCL and Recurrent Visiting Professor in Nationalism Studies at CEU. He has worked on Hungarian public life since the mid-1980s.
Perhaps this article should not have merely glossed over George Soros with a mere two sentences, and instead went further into his CV or biography to point out to the unaware reader of the extent of him being a controversial figure. I can let people draw their own conclusions on his ambitions regarding a border-free world (amongst other goals of his), but let’s just say that if Soros was a conservative (instead of a “progressive” [but more appropriately a “regressive”]), academia would not be praising him, but instead they would vilify him and all of his philosophical ambitions (including that University).
For some odd reason you seem to think the point in this debate is whether one admires Soros or not – as if merely arguing that a university should have a right to exist is to ratify every belief held by its founders. Universities are made up of independent academics, they don’t sit around regurgitating propaganda 24/7 (and if you think that’s what they do then you can’t have much understanding of academia). The idea academics would be celebrating the closure of a university founded by a Conservative is so out of touch it barely deserves a response.
John, your comment is absolutely irrelevant. What you need to know about Soros in this context is this: he is Hungarian by birth, and he has been an enemy of dictatorships. Soros funded in Hungary universities, research, proper professional journalism. All the research CEU’s employees conduct is public, it is published in the same blind-reviewed professional journals as those of any other researcher. Also: many of CEU’s best have worked or work with the Orban government’s administration, they have been advisors, etc. They are proper professionals, not politicians.
Soros also does not take part in the daily running of the University. In modern universities in the US and in many other countries universities are run by the Vice-Chancellor, advised by an executive Board of heads of faculties and directors, and audited. The same is true of CEU. It is a professional uni.
I know this is hard to understand from the West because you did not have to be parts of the Soviet Union, but this is not a conservative-liberal issue, and hence Soros’s business ventures, and his American political role is irrelevant. This is not American internal politics and should not be interpreted on the basis of the models used for that. This is an issue of whether Hungary should draw close again to Russia and install an authoritarian state, or remain a proper democracy. You might oppose Soros’s politics in the US. But you can’t fault his activities to support a transition to proper civil societies in Central- and East-Europe after the Soviet Union’s collapse, unless you are a supporter of dictatorships and authoritarian corrupt regimes like Erdogan’s and Putin’s, and support Russia’s renewed effort for regional dominance. This is what is at stake here. This is about CEU and the Hungarian government’s wider politics in the region, not about Soros.
If the person funding this University was not a tainted person by trying to unfairly influence global politics AND to unfairly influence the domestic politics of foreign countries thru regressive “shaming” and “thought-control”, then yes, I would agree with you. But this person is attempting to re-shape the balance of the current World Order into one from his own imagination. But many in academia have opinions that are in accord with his, thus they support him. But such actions make this person dangerous, and any monies originating from him are thus also tainted.
But let’s give a similar example of a person trying to influence global politics AND the domestic politics of foreign countries. If (for example) Vladimir Putin was self-funding a University in Hungary, do you suppose that the supporters of the Soros University would be in similar support for the Putin University? No, they would not! They would be crying “bloody murder” to the perceived potential influence peddling and the alleged brain-washing of the youth; but this is somehow acceptable when Soros does it. So everything you stated about the independence and integrity of Universities is noted, but I am sure you would expeditiously adjust your opinion if this was a Putin University in your country.
Nothing you’ve said justifies the actual legislation passed by the Hungarian parliament. Instead of engaging with the subject properly and assessing whether a government has passed legislation to undermine a university it happens to have a distaste for (a pretty serious matter for anyone who cares about free speech and democracy) you’ve launched into a straw man argument about Putin, broadly aimed at some caricature of a “liberal” or “globalist” position you presumably spend your entire life railing against, and ignored the actual situation on the ground.
If by chance Putin did fund a university then I imagine the views of “academics” toward that university would depend on its research outputs and teaching record. CEU is a university that has a sound international reputation, which scores in the top 100 for several disciplines in standard rankings (e.g. THE’s rankings for the social sciences). Anyone who has any actual familiarity with the university would know that, but you’ve clearly just latched on to the topic because it’s in the headlines and started spouting standard arguments without bothering to learn any of the background.
I could discuss the official intent of the legislation, but I instead chose to discuss the actual intent of the legislation. Are you of the general belief that the official reasons for any legislation OR the official justification for any Judicial ruling is necessarily the actual reason of the Legislatures/Judges? Or are you of the general belief that Legislatures/Judges somehow justify their true beliefs with some legal basis? I believe it is the latter.
Perhaps if George cuts his ties (and money) from Soros U, then perhaps this legislation may be subsequently repealed.
You didn’t discuss the actual intent of the legislation, which is plainly to shut down a platform that the Hungarian government finds inconvenient for its political ambitions, undermine opposition to the government in Hungarian civil society ahead of a key election, and tighten the control over information that Orban already enjoys. Anyone with any thought about democracy and free speech should be alarmed at that and the only argument you seem to be able to offer to defend it is a limp attack against George Soros which is entirely irrelevant to the situation on the ground. I don’t care how much you dislike George Soros, in the free world we don’t shut down universities simply because we dislike the views of one of their founders.
You’re laughably trying to present CEU as some kind of cult-like organisation intent on brainwashing teenagers, when it’s an internationally respected university that’s entirely integrated into the European/global higher education network. It’s a completely absurd argument and beyond attacking Soros you haven’t offered a single piece of evidence to justify it. As I said above, the impression you’re giving is of someone who doesn’t understand any of the background about what CEU does, but who has latched on to the story to push a standard (and fairly dull) line about Putin, globalism and liberals that is so old-hat it’s barely worth responding to.
You say “Anyone with any thought about democracy and free speech should be alarmed at that and the only argument you seem to be able to offer to defend it is a limp attack against George Soros which is entirely irrelevant to the situation on the ground.”
As for you questioning whether this was a democratic act or not, is there any allegation that there were any violations of any proper procedural processes in enacting this legislation? I am unaware of any procedural improprieties, nor have any procedural flaws been raised. As for any allegations of violations of substantive rights, any such matter(s) can be raised with the Hungarian Judiciary to adjudicate and rule on any alleged violations.
You go on to say that Soros himself is not relevant to any argument in the enactment of this legislation. That is your opinion. But the opinion of the Parliament (and of Orban) is counter to your opinion. For those who do not like this legislative act, those people can be reminded that the next Parliamentary election is in 2018.
So that is how democracy works. There is a Legislature (Parliament), a Judiciary, and the Executive (Government). And at the heart of it, there is the “will of the people” which is exercised thru elections. So it is the “will of the Hungarian people” that will determine next year whether this legislation survives or whether a new Parliament repeals it; the “will” of non-Hungarians regarding domestic legislation is not their concern.
That’s just about the flimsiest attempt at a defence of this that I’ve heard yet. You judge the actions of a government by the impact they have on society. Trying to defend this because it happened to be voted through parliament without breaking a procedural rule is reductive to the point of absurdity.