Amendments to Hungary’s higher education law, passed in April, prevents Hungarian universities from delivering programs or awarding degrees from non-European universities and would make CEU unable to recruit new students from 2018/19.

“I want to emphasise to all of you today: we will not close”

Dubbed ‘Lex CEU’, the amendment is considered by many to deliberately target Central European University, a graduate-level university accredited in both Hungary and the US.

Underlining this thinking, CEU president Michael Ignatieff described the legislation as “a calculated and premeditated attack on the academic freedom of an institution which has been part of Hungarian academic life for 25 years”.

Speaking at a press conference at CEU in Budapest today, Ignatieff was defiant, saying: “We’re going to fight to do what we do so well.”

“Budapest is our home, we’re staying here, and it’s business as usual.”

But the “absurd law” still poses a threat to the institution, he said.

There is nothing in the law that prevents the university from operating in 2017/18, he explained, but it does prohibit the university from taking new students in 2018/19.

“We are still threatened with an attack on our academic freedom that is extremely serious, because a university that can’t take new students is a university that’s fated to close,” he said.

In the last two months, ‘Lex CEU’  has triggered protests and an outcry from the international academic community.

“We are still threatened with an attack on our academic freedom that is extremely serious”

Earlier this month, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to sanction the Hungarian government by invoking Article 7, which enables it to suspend EU voting rights for a country deemed to have committed fundamental rights violations.

It calls on the Hungarian government to “reach an agreement with the US authorities, making it possible for Central European University to remain in Budapest as a free institution”.

However, these moves at the European level may take months, Ignatieff said.

“We can’t wait for these outcomes; we would welcome a solution of the problem but we’re a university and we have to keep going.

“I want to emphasise to all of you today: we will not close.”

Communication between the two sides is underway and last Friday, the government had a phone call with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Ignatieff said.

“We welcome that and we hope that it will lead to a speedy – let me emphasise ‘speedy’ – resolution of a dispute that has gone on far too long,” he urged.