In 2017, some 70,000 people marched through the streets of Budapest to protest a government crackdown on Central European University (CEU), one of Hungary’s most-prominent academic institutions.
CEU, founded in 1991 by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, symbolized liberal academic values in postcommunist Hungary.
But after nearly three decades in the country, CEU was forced out of Hungary under pressure from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government. The catalyst was a new law, widely referred to as “Lex CEU,” which imposed legal hurdles the institution could not overcome.
“The CEU story tells you that a determined autocratic leader with a democratic mandate can use democracy to weaken democracy by attacking free institutions,” said Michael Ignatieff, who was president of CEU during the conflict with the Hungarian government. “And this is happening in all kinds of places.”
The attack on CEU was not an isolated event.
Since 2010, Hungary has made sweeping changes to its higher education system, which experts say have undermined academic freedom and promoted Orbán’s Christian nationalist ideology. He’s also pitched these ideas abroad, finding a receptive audience among US conservatives.
“We cannot fight successfully by liberal means because our opponents use liberal institutions, concepts and language to disguise their Marxist and hegemonist plans,” Orbán said in a keynote speech to CPAC Texas in 2022. “Politics, my friends, are not enough. This war is a culture war.”
Orbán continued, saying, “The only thing we Hungarians can show you is how to fight back by our own rules.”
To win this war against what he called the “woke globalist Goliath,” Orbán said institutions from churches to universities must be “revitalized.”
Members of US President Donald Trump’s inner circle have taken note of Orbán’s approach to reshaping academia. In a May 2024 interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, then-US Sen. J.D. Vance expressed support for Orbán’s use of funding as leverage over universities.
“I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orbán has ever done. I don’t know everything he’s ever done,” Vance said. “What I do think is … on the university principle, the idea that taxpayers should have some influence in how their money is spent on these universities, it’s a totally reasonable thing. And I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that … we could learn from the United States.”
Orbán’s model
That transformation began with a constitutional overhaul and sweeping changes to higher education policy, according to Princeton University legal scholar Kim Lane Scheppele. In the early years of Orbán’s rule, the Hungarian government cut university funding by about 40%, Scheppele shared.
“Remember that this is Europe where almost all the universities are public universities,” said Scheppele, who has studied Hungary’s constitutional law. “So, when you cut the funding by 40%, you’ve really completely changed the academic landscape in Hungary.”
Although the Hungarian government framed these reforms as postrecession, cost-saving measures, the EU and others criticized them as a power grab that weakened institutional independence.
In 2021, Orbán’s government handed control of most public universities to private foundations. Critics say these are led by political allies, some with lifetime appointments. By the end of that year, these foundations controlled 70% of Hungary’s universities. In response, the EU froze funding over “conflict-of-interest concerns.”
“It creates these institutions that seem to be independent, but they are not,” said Gábor Scheiring, a former Hungarian parliamentarian who opposed the Fidesz Party. “They are run by people who were directly appointed by Viktor Orbán … ex-Fidesz politicians … and the owners and CEOs of the biggest corporations in the country.”
Scheiring, now a professor at Georgetown University’s Qatar campus, said the political climate in Hungary left little space for dissent.
“It’s a combination of lack of political space and the ridiculous level of Hungarian wages and really no short-term change inside, neither democratically nor for the higher education sector,” he said. “Over the years, I just made the decision that I can’t do this anymore.”
An academic exodus
Between state cuts and EU funding freezes, Hungary has seen many academics choose to take their work abroad.
“People are exiting,” said Judit Gardos, a Budapest-based sociologist. “The brain drain is really, really big towards Western Europe.”
Hungarian academic salaries are among the lowest in Europe. An assistant professor earns about $1,000 a month; an associate professor, around $1,500.
Gardos, a representative of the Hungarian Academic Staff Forum, said public institutions are politically constrained, with certain research fields excluded from funding.
“For example, gender studies research or sometimes research on corruption is not very favored, so people don’t get money anymore,” Gardos said. “Our salaries are really low, and people who want to earn money have to go to universities that are already these foundations that are led by government people, or people who are really near to the government.”
‘Every institution has values’
One institution receiving significant support is the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). Its board chairman is Orbán’s political director. With over $1.1 billion in state funding, MCC offers top-paid faculty positions and prestigious fellowships.
Though not a university offering degrees, “It’s sort of a boot camp for training party members … and a propaganda outfit giving the party line to the Hungarian population,” Scheppele said.
“I think the claims that we’re a breeding ground for future Fidesz elites — I think that’s totally incorrect,” said MCC spokesman Stephen Sholl. “If you talk to most of our students, you know, our students always maintain that there is no political pressure coming from the teachers.”
But MCC does have values, he said: “patriotism, love of one’s country … skepticism of recent trends like cancel culture … free speech … a sensible approach to migration.”
Sholl came to Hungary as a Budapest Fellow, part of an MCC program inviting Americans to explore Hungarian society. He said MCC appeals to US conservatives who felt otherwise stifled in liberal university environments back in their home country.
“At MCC, we have a highly cultured, highly educational environment where we welcome conservatives and we welcome nonconservatives as well,” Sholl said.
Not all alumni share that experience.
“The curriculum at MCC comes with a very conservative tilt. It echoes all the positions of the Hungarian government,” said Bence Szechenyi, a Budapest Fellow in 2021. “Faculty and speakers, as I learned, are rigorously selected to be politically in line, ideologically compatible, so that the talking points are reiterated to these students as they make their way into the world.”
Szechenyi, a dual US-Hungarian national, alleges that, during his stint as a fellow, he felt pressured by MCC to align his writing with government messaging.
“Fellows pump out positive articles about Hungary month after month,” he said. “And [these articles] come up when you search Hungary. They come up when you search a policy. They come up when you search Orbán, and it ‘floods the zone.’”
He said that he believes that Hungary’s outreach to US conservatives helps legitimize Orbán’s populism.
“The more that [Orbán] is known as a success in international right-wing politics — that all strengthens his validity within Hungary so this is what he’s likely trying to cultivate — is an international legitimacy to make himself look like a principled person,” said Szechenyi, who now works as an investigative reporter for the independent Hungarian news organization Direkt36.
Trans-Atlantic dialogue
MCC regularly hosts right-wing US speakers, including Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, Jr.
Jonathan Butcher, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has spoken at MCC. He sees parallels between the US and Hungary.
“Conversations that we have had have been around having curriculum being overrun by special interests or frankly how radical views are seeping into schools and steering school curriculum away from math and history and the core subjects,” he said.
Other lines of communication exist. In 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank known for promoting Project 2025, signed a cooperation agreement with the Danube Institute, a pro-Orbán think tank with Hungarian government funding. The aim, they say, is knowledge sharing and exchanges of visiting fellows.
“I am proud to call Viktor Orbán a friend and ally, and I am proud of the strong relationship between Heritage and The Danube Institute,” said Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in an interview with CBS News late last year. “While Heritage does not take a cent from foreign governments or institutions, we are working alongside conservatives around the world to end the globalist era,” he added.
In February 2024, Vance gave an interview conducted by Danube Institute fellow Rod Dreher – a conservative American writer based in Hungary who considers himself a friend of the vice president.
“The closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary,” Vance told Dreher. “I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give [them] a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.”
In recent weeks, the US government has stepped up threats of funding cuts to major American universities. Chief among those universities is Harvard. The private, nonprofit institution has seen both cuts to its federal funding as well as attempts by the Trump administration to sever its revenue from international students. The administration has repeatedly criticized US college campuses, claiming they promote “woke” ideology.
“Orbán’s main weapon of attack against all independent institutions, including the universities, was always financial,” said the legal scholar Scheppele. “That’s exactly what we’re seeing here.”
Her own institution, Princeton, has also been threatened with cuts. Still, she said that she believes the US has stronger institutional safeguards.
“Taking over the US is much more complicated,” Scheppele said. “The checks and balances of the US system are far stronger than what Viktor Orbán faced.”
At least, for now.
The Trump administration did not offer comment for this story.