Hungarian regime shows democracy fragile, warns Ignatieff

The political machinations that have recently forced an American university to cease operations in Hungary should serve as a warning about the growing global threat of authoritarian regimes, current school president and former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Monday.

Ignatieff said that the Central European University, a graduate institution founded by billionaire George Soros in 1991, has been “forced out” of the country by the current far-right government of Victor Orban, who has joined other like-minded politicians in blaming the U.S. philanthropist for Europe’s migrant crisis.

The university, which serves about 1,400 international students, has decided to move its U.S.-accredited degree programs from Hungary to neighbouring Austria next September after meeting with ongoing resistance from the Orban regime, said Ignatieff, the school’s president and rector since 2016.

Ignatieff, who spent a turbulent three-year tenure as leader of Canada’s federal opposition between 2008 and 2011, said the fate of CEU should serve as a warning sign to all democratic countries including Canada.

“This is a regime that...has gone after the courts, it’s gone after the press, it’s changed the constitution, it’s gerrymandered the political system,” Ignatieff said. “There’s a clear direction to what it’s doing, and the attack on the university is just another stage in that process. I think Canadians should be concerned that democracy is under threat in Hungary.”

Ignatieff noted a certain irony in the situation given CEU’s origins as an anti-Communist university.

“This is an institution founded to assist the society transition out of single-party rule. We’re being driven out of Hungary by a government that is consolidating single-party rule,” he said. “This is a story about what happened to the transition from communism. It didn’t go in the direction that anybody expected.”

Hungary’s fight with CEU is seen as part of a more comprehensive crackdown on academic freedom, including tighter budgetary and research controls over Hungarian universities.