Students on Saturday marched in support of a university founded by US billionaire George Soros in Hungary, ahead of a deadline for a legal dispute to be resolved.
The government says the embattled Central European University (CEU), chartered in the US state of New York, has not yet met the requirements of a law passed last year requiring foreign universities to have a campus in their home country. The legal dispute is part of a wider campaign waged by Budapest in recent years against the Hungarian-born Soros, 88, accused by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of stoking illegal immigration. “No university can last in limbo for long,” said Petra Kornel, 18, one of around 2,000 students who took part in the march in Budapest. The bill’s adoption, seen by critics as a blow against academic freedom, was cited in a recent scathing EU report on Hungary that prompted the European Parliament to launch unprecedented so-called “Article 7” legal action against Budapest in September. CEU says it has complied with the law by opening a facility in New York State that US regulators have confirmed as hosting educational activities.
Published in Daily Times, November 26th 2018.