In April 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation threatening Central European University's operations. CEU quickly conveyed that this was a threat to academic freedom, sending bilingual updates, holding press conferences, launching and managing a letter-writing campaign and a social media campaign. The result? Support from 19 Nobel Prize laureates, the president of Germany, the presidents of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, thousands of researchers and professional organizations worldwide, as well as the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
From the Judges' Report
It is hard to imagine a larger crisis than government action threatening the very existence of your institution. That is the situation that Central European University faced when the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation essentially prohibiting the institution from admitting students. Judges thought that CEU pulled together a simple, effective and impressive strategy to push back on the government, using both domestic and international pressure. As a result, the institution was able to regain the ability to admit new students and sent a message about the importance of institutional autonomy and academic freedom.
