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A school founded by George Soros fled Hungary after it was targeted by an authoritarian leader. Academics at the school say President Trump is using a similar playbook against Harvard.
By Alan Blinder
Alan Blinder, who covers American higher education, reported from Vienna.
June 8, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
In a former bank building, away from Vienna’s palaces and opera houses, Central European University lives in exile.
The school, founded by George Soros, was once an example of academia flourishing in post-Soviet Europe. Now, less than a decade after Hungary’s right-wing government forced it to move out of Budapest, people there are sounding warnings as President Trump seeks to bring America’s top universities to heel.
“It’s like we keep screaming at the void, and no one is listening,” said Sepphora Llanes, a graduate student from Colorado.
But some are.
As the Trump administration escalates its pressure campaign, more people in American higher education — and in Vienna — believe the U.S. government is borrowing from a playbook refined in recent years by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who used state power to menace a university he disdained, upend academic independence and strengthen his ideological grip on Hungary.
“At the abstract level, it’s the same,” said Carsten Q. Schneider, a German scholar who has worked for C.E.U. for more than 20 years and will become its interim president and rector in August.
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