Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Why Strongmen Won't Win Their Wars Against Education

The leaders of Hungary and Turkey are creating a vacuum that their political rivals will inevitably fill.

October 19, 2017 at 6:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Time: on his side.
Photographer: Thierry Tronnel/Corbis via Getty Images

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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's continuing attack on Central European University, founded by financier George Soros, is the product of a deep political fear. While authoritarian regimes are not big spenders on education, their leaders' recognition of its importance is evident from how jealously they will try to guard it from their political rivals.

In April, Hungary passed a law requiring foreign-funded universities that operate in the country to offer courses on a campus in their country of origin. The measure was clearly directed against CEU as part of Orban's campaign against Soros, who was born in Hungary. Orban considers the billionaire his nemesis and accuses him of having devised a sinister plan to flood Europe with Muslim immigrants. In response, Soros has called Orban's Hungary a "mafia state."