Hungary drove a top university into exile. JD Vance said it should be a model for the U.S.

EuropeOrbán's Hungary drove a top university campus into exile. JD Vance said it should be a model for the U.S.“The closest conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with the left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary,” Vance said in 2024.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 11, 2026, 6:30 AM EDTBy Alexander SmithBUDAPEST, Hungary — The Central European University in Hungary’s capital still looks the part.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Its limestone entrance rises above a grand 1820s mansion, its newer additions all hard modern lines and confidence. It has won architecture awards. It was built to suggest a certain kind of Hungary, too: outward-looking, liberal, at ease with the West.Today it is eerily quiet.Founded by George Soros after the fall of communism, the university says the authoritarian government of Viktor Orbán forced 90% of its teaching operations out of the country in 2019, leaving behind a stark symbol of how far the nation has moved during the prime minister’s 16-year regime.“This should be full of students but as you can see it is almost empty,” Márta Pardavi, one of Hungary’s most prominent human rights advocates, said while showing NBC News around the building this week.Award-winning Irish architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey designed the Central European University in Budapest, seen in April 2025, right, and before it relocated its main campus to Vienna, left, pictured in January 2019.Alexander Smith/NBC News; Chris McGrath/Getty ImagesWhen the Central European University moved academic activities to Vienna, 130 miles west over the border with Austria, its then rector, Michael Ignatieff, described it as a “dark day for freedom in Hungary” and for academia.Someone with a different view of the strongman’s education crackdown is Vice Preside...