The acclaimed Central European University (CEU) says it may have to leave its home of a quarter century in Hungary if right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban succeeds in pushing punitive and vindictive legislation.

"After careful legal study, CEU has concluded that these amendments would make it impossible for the university to continue its operations as an institution of higher education in Budapest," the university said in a statement.

The dispute is one of a right-wing government taking on a perceived Left-wing institution.  Liberal billionaire financier George Soros founded CEU in Budapest in 1991 to foster democracy, transparency, and civil society in the former communist bloc after the Iron Curtain fell.  A 2004 agreement allows the school to operate and issue degrees accredited both in Hungary and in the US.

But Mr. Soros is a major critic of the current occupant of the White House Donald Trump, whom Soros calls "a con artist and would-be dictator".  Orban, on the other hand, is a fan of trump.  Soros has also criticized Orban's "illiberal rule", and finances a series of human rights NGOs which have gotten on Orban's nerves.

"The timing of the legislation coincides with the wide-ranging attacks on the Soros institutions, which makes it hard to see it as a mere fluke," said analyst Gergely Rajnai from the Center for Fair Political Analysis in Budapest.

The proposed law is typical of a meddling bureaucracy:  It requires CEU to open a campus in the US; bars it from issuing degrees in Hungary; and would force it to change its name.  Asked why this nonsense is necessary, Hungary's human resources minister Zoltan Balog cited nebulous "national security considerations" and to make certain the university's courses meet the ruling party's "foreign policy priorities".

The legislation "is a piece of vandalism, and we believe it must be stopped, not just for our sake, but for the sake of Hungarian and European academic freedom," said CEU rector and president Michael Ignatief, the former leader of the Canadian Liberal Party.  Representatives of Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Romania are standing with CEU.  And for now, the school is supported by the US charge d'affaires in Hungary David Kostelancik who said, "The United States opposes any effort to compromise the operations or independence of the university." 

But that is not certain to last, considering the mutual antipathy between Soros and Trump.  And Hungary's Education Ministry is holding firm.

"The government does not consider it justified to withdraw its proposals to modify the higher education laws, including the operating conditions of foreign higher education institutions in Hungary," it said on Friday.