Hungary Offers Model for Conservative Higher Ed Reform

Newsweek

a day ago

Across the West, universities have ceased to be neutral institutions. Once dedicated to the pursuit of truth, they have become fortresses of ideological conformity. Anyone who diverges from progressive orthodoxy is excluded from faculty ranks, free inquiry is subordinated to activism, and taxpayer funds flow into administrative bureaucracies that enforce political correctness. What was once debate is now enforcement. What used to be education is now indoctrination.
This is no longer a matter of liberal drift but an illiberal takeover—the Berkeley hippies who moved into faculty lounges decades ago would now be considered retrograde white supremacists—a structural crisis. As our colleague Christopher Rufo laid out last month in the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education, this moment calls for more than gentle nudges. Universities have violated their founding compact to seek truth and develop knowledge for the common good. They take billions from the federal government and repay it with contempt for most of the country. Reform will not come from within, so it must be cajoled from without.
The West already has a model for what such reform can look like: Hungary. Hungary's approach to higher education has attracted scorn from international media and Western academics, who label it authoritarian. In truth, it has begun what American reformers have only recently proposed, and which the Trump administration is attempting to achieve as it moves to remedy our leading universities' massive civil rights violations: a serious realignment of higher education with the values of the nation that sustain it.
Since 2021, the Hungarian government has restructured many of its public universities into foundation models, governed by boards of trustees. These boards, comprised of academics and civic leaders, are tasked with upholding academic integrity while ensuring institutional accountability. These structures resemble those in place in Germany and the Netherlands, so the opposition to them isn't technical, but political: Hungary's critics oppose this restructuring not because they fear dysfunction, but because they fear competition.
ROME, ITALY - JUNE 24: Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán meets the press at Palazzo Chigi after a meeting with Giorgia Meloni on June 24, 2024 in Rome, Italy.
ROME, ITALY - JUNE 24: Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán meets the press at Palazzo Chigi after a meeting with Giorgia Meloni on June 24, 2024 in Rome, Italy.
Simona Granati - Corbis/Getty Images
Some of these reforms are specific to the Hungarian context, but the reaction to them lays bare an underlying reality: "academic freedom" in the mouths of Western progressives no longer means the freedom to pursue open inquiry. Instead, the concept has been perverted to mean higher-ed grandees' exclusive right to determine who participates in scholarly life. In an Orwellian twist, it means suppressing dissenting views, excluding nonconformists, and protecting institutional monopolies under the pretense of intellectual neutrality.
Nowhere has this dynamic become clearer than in the recent controversy surrounding Balázs Orbán, the political director to Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (no relation). Last December, Balázs Orbán successfully defended his PhD dissertation at Eötvös Loránd University. His thesis, focused on constitutional issues attending national sovereignty, was approved by a faculty committee, earned the highest honors, and passed all academic and procedural reviews.
But that didn't stop left-wing academics from launching a smear campaign. A German academic blog alleged that Orbán benefited from political favoritism. Critics also alleged plagiarism, then abandoned that charge when no evidence emerged. Dissenting members of the university's doctoral council admitted that the thesis was academically sound but still opposed it on vague ethical grounds, citing Orbán's position in government. One professor called on the university to deny the degree outright, not because of scholarly deficiencies, but because of Orbán's political affiliation.
This was no isolated outburst, but part of a broader effort to delegitimize conservative participation in academic life. Even Anna Unger, a legal scholar critical of the government, described the backlash as a coordinated campaign of intimidation.
The campaign failed and Orbán earned his degree. But the real lesson of the episode lies in what it revealed. The opposition was not to the content of his work, but to the idea that someone aligned with Hungary's government could be allowed to participate in academic life at all. The critics were not defending scholarly standards, but their exclusive claim to setting those standards.
This pattern is not unique to Hungary. American universities famously screen out candidates based on "diversity statements," enforce other ideological litmus tests, and use public funds to support political activism. Institutions that were created to educate citizens have become tools for reshaping them.
The Manhattan Statement calls for a new compact, as does model legislation that one of us (Shapiro) helped develop and that's been adopted in many states. Universities should be required to eliminate political loyalty tests, disband race-based bureaucracies, and restore merit as the primary basis for admission, hiring, and promotion. Free speech must be enforced in practice, not just in theory. Institutions that refuse to comply should lose taxpayer funding. These are not radical demands, but overdue correctives necessary for restoring public trust in higher education.
Hungary's experience shows that such reforms are both possible and effective. The foundation model has stabilized university finances, increased transparency, and enabled new institutions, such as the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), to grow. MCC, whose board Orbán chairs—and where both of us have been involved in programming—sponsors research, runs seminars, hosts visiting speakers, and offers fellowships to students with a range of views. It represents a different vision of what academic life can be.
That vision is one in which public institutions serve the public, not a self-replicating elite. It's one in which conservatives and classical liberals can participate in scholarly debate without being treated as intruders. It's one in which universities are once again judged by whether they produce knowledge and educate citizens, not whether they reinforce progressive narratives.
The university is not above the political community that sustains it. When it ceases to reflect and serve that community and begins to function as an engine of ideological enforcement—not to mention identity-based discrimination—it forfeits its privileged status. In that case, as Hungary's example shows, the state has not only the right, but also the duty, to act.
Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites.
Charles Yockey was formerly a legal policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute who spent the past year living in Budapest as a fellow of the Hungary Foundation.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.