‘Sand in the gears’: What Mass. can learn from the higher ed crackdown inspiring Trump
This article is the third in a series examining higher education under the Trump administration. Earlier articles in the series can be read here and here .
Professor Andrea Pető led four large men into a room where she had gathered over 100 boxes filled with books, many of which she had been banned from teaching. They began picking them up and moving them out.
After decades of teaching gender studies in Hungary, Pető was leaving the country in 2020, like hundreds of other academics. Her school, Central European University, had been forced out and relocated to Vienna.
The migration was part of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's crackdown on higher education, which is now being emulated in the United States at New College of Florida and even in Massachusetts .
But before leaving, Pető taught one more lesson — to her movers.
"We were working together when they dared to ask what gender is," said Pető, who has been at the university since 1991 and was its fourth employee in Budapest. "I used this pedagogical opportunity during the heavy physical work and gave a short course."
By the time the boxes were gone, she had converted Orbán sympathizers into higher education supporters, a last moment of resistance under Orbán's rule.
At the same time, Orbán's reach was expanding.
Pető watched from her home in Austria a few years later as President Donald Trump's administration mimicked what she saw from Orbán, weakening universities and limiting certain studies.
Higher education leaders in Massachusetts and beyond have a lot to learn from Hungarian academics and the resistance movements that sprouted up in the country, she said.
"It is not rocket science to see what is happening and what will happen in U.S. higher education. What is truly surprising is that many colleagues in the U.S. did not read or listen to what their peers in Europe, Brazil and elsewhere were warning them about. U.S. exceptionalism blinded them," Pető said.
Why Orbán and Trump have targeted higher education
Parked to the side of the yellowing tan library at the New College of Florida on a November afternoon sat an old Toyota Camry with the university's name on its license plate and stickers on its rear.
A sticker held an image of the U.S. with Orbán's face popping out of it. It read: "Make America Hungary Again," echoing Trump's slogan.
The first substantial overhaul of a college in the U.S. was at the New College of Florida , where its governor and board of trustees in 2023 abolished the gender studies program, uprooted its leadership and a flood of faculty and students left the institution — moves that closely mirrored what happened to higher education institutions in Hungary a few years earlier.
Some students, like Jackson Dawson , have appreciated the changes at New College — saying he feels more comfortable expressing ideas in classes. Other students, however, have felt the need to leave the college. Over one hundred students and faculty fled amidst the changes, many to Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Among them was Student Senate President Libby Harrity, a queer student leader who faced the threat of criminal prosecution in reaction to actions at a protest.
Orbán and Trump have been going after higher education due to a desire to consolidate power and control knowledge production, according to Leon Botstein, board chairman of the Hungarian university from 2007 to 2022 and longtime president of Bard College in New York.
"Viktor Orbán is an authoritarian and an opponent of democracy, and Donald Trump is an authoritarian who doesn't respect either the Constitution or the rule of law and sees no boundary to prevent him from pursuing his own financial self-interest as well," Botstein said.
The Trump administration has previously argued that its crackdown on Harvard has been to root out antisemitism. However, a federal judge called that argument a "smokescreen" to mask an ideological assault on the university. The U.S. Department of Education didn't respond to requests for comment for this series.
Under Orbán's rule, 11 state-run higher education institutions and their assets were transferred to quasi-public foundations run by Orbán allies; gender studies was abolished; and a university was moved into a private foundation, forcing leadership changes.
New College of Florida Board of Trustees member Christopher Rufo, who was instrumental in the politically conservative changes that took place there , spent six weeks in Hungary to learn how the country was rebuilding its universities. Authors of Project 2025 , a 900-page blueprint that envisions a federal government with expanded presidential power, have also worked with Hungarian organizations and claimed to take inspiration from Orbán.
Despite initially distancing himself from Project 2025, Trump has largely adhered to it, particularly in the field of education. He has signed executive orders to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and to ban critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how racism is ingrained in society.
"It's not just one institution. It's a major strategy of interlinked institutions," said Gábor Scheiring, former member of the Hungarian Parliament.
Orbán was the first European leader to endorse Trump's presidential bid in 2016. And in 2024, as Trump was running for election again, Vice President J.D. Vance said the U.S. should learn from what Orbán has done in Hungary.
"The closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán's approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching," Vance told The European Conservative .
The value — and limitations — of protest movements
Students and academics across Hungary have organized massive movements over the past decade, specifically in response to pressures on universities and colleges — something that hasn't happened recently in the U.S.
In 2017, under Orbán's rule, the Hungarian Parliament passed an amendment to its higher education law that targeted Central European University and effectively forced the university out of the country.
In response to the amendment, around 70,000 people protested in Budapest.
Then, in 2020, hundreds of students occupied a key building at the University for Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest for over 80 days . It was in protest to changes to the board of trustees and the institution's move to become a private foundation. It ended due to the pandemic.
In June of this year, around 15,000 protesters congregated in Hungary to call for a widespread resistance movement against Orbán.
However, to Scheiring, the protests didn't actually change Orbán's actions.
"I think the main lessons are that the window for resistance closes in competitive authoritarian regimes over time," said Scheiring, now an assistant professor at Georgetown University Qatar.
Hungarian students Gábor Nagy and Otília Biszák said protests are crucial in creating solidarity between academics and institutions, so no university feels alone.
Nagy and Biszák are also organizers through the Tanítanék or "I would like to teach" Movement. The movement was started in reaction to teachers not being paid enough and focuses on primary and secondary education.
"It's not just our problem; we should care about others' problems too," Biszák said.
The U.S. needs to work together, between institutions, to slow the Trump administration's rule, Nagy said.
"I love my country… it's my country," Nagy said. "It's not the people in power who want to oppress people. It's not theirs, it's mine and the people that think like me, that think that oppression shouldn't be a way to treat each other."
Resistance in the U.S. has largely been isolated protests. However, most recently, 11 Massachusetts university organizers joined together for the first time in November to fight back against the federal government. A letter from hundreds of college presidents also challenged Trump in April.
The largest protests that have happened in reaction to federal government pressure are the "No Kings" protests , which aren't specific to higher education, but have drawn millions of Americans across the country to peacefully organize.
"You have to act fast and it has to be a lot of people. And that can slow things down," Nagy said.
Forging international partnerships can save universities
A lifeline for Central European University came in the form of another country, Austria, stepping in to provide it a new home. Forging these connections with other countries — or states in the U.S. — can be crucial, said Liviu Matei, who was the provost of the university leading the transition to Austria.
Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Austria offered Central European University refuge when the institution couldn't stay in Hungary, he said.
As Central European University attempted to stay in Hungary, Matei approached political leaders and international organizations to try to mobilize support. The university also looked into legal action, but didn't have standing to be able to go to court.
"There was enormous solidarity in the world," Matei said. "It has to do with the right to education with academic freedom."
Several universities abroad also partnered with academics who resigned from the University for Theatre and Film Arts to create an accredited program for students who wanted to leave the institution but continue to be taught by their professors.
Similarly, at Harvard, as the Trump administration attacked international students' ability to study there, the university offered students the option to attend the University of Toronto.
And, when New College of Florida was radically changed, Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts offered students the opportunity to transfer. More than 50 New College students — about 8% of the undergraduate student body in 2023 — took the college up on the offer.
Hampshire was a lifeline for transfer students like Blaise Paine , who felt New College wouldn't be safe anymore due to their queer identity.
"I am presently still safer here than I would have been in Florida. And it feels better to have state leadership that is more or less putting up a fight, even if they're sometimes conciliatory," Paine said.
Moving isn't easy, however. Since leaving Hungary, Central European University has been figuring out how to exist in a completely different country, according to Andrea Weber, a Central European University economics professor.
"A lot was lost," Weber said. "The feeling of community at CEU changed a lot with this move and with uprooting so many people. And also the mission of the university did change. And so it became a bit more aimless than it was before."
While the university was able to move, the political and media discourse in Hungary had an emotional and physical toll on academics — especially on those who commuted to Austria or who couldn't immediately move away, Matei said.
"There were colleagues, for example, who had kids in primary schools who told me that their children had problems because the government media was depicting us, meaning the parents of those kids, all my colleagues, as agents of international kabbalahs, usually with an antisemitic tone," Matei said.
George Soros, a Hungarian billionaire and the university's founder, provided the funding to relocate to Austria, only a two-and-a-half-hour train ride away from their home base in Budapest, Matei said. But the move was more complicated than receiving financial support.
"There was also a human cost of this. I moved. My wife stayed in Budapest for a while because we didn't have a house, a job for her in Vienna," said Matei, who now works at King's College London.
Using democracy to defend itself
Elections are essential to upholding the independence of higher education and larger society, said Botstein, president of Bard College.
"Despite the protests of tens of thousands of citizens of Budapest, the entire nation, when it voted, they remained in the minority… We have to use our democratic means to reclaim the freedom and the rule of law under our own Constitution. So the lesson we learned from Hungary is to use democracy to defend itself," Botstein said.
Americans should focus on electoral organizing and voting for candidates that will "make America great and not destroy it from within," he said.
Botstein, formerly the board chairman for Central European University, believes Trump is borrowing Orbán's playbook for upending universities, as seen through individual attacks against Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and other institutions. Many of those institutions have struck deals with the federal government.
"The assault on the American university was successfully launched by Trump and his allies to splinter the American academic community," Botstein said.
Challenging the rule of leaders through the courts is also critical.
A few years after Central European University largely moved out of Hungary, the European Court of Justice ruled that Hungary's forced removal was unlawful. The decision came down too late to stop its forced move to Austria in part because of procedural delays and Orbán having allies in the Hungarian courts.
In the U.S., the courts have secured some wins for universities. A federal judge reinstated nearly $3 billion in federal funding at Harvard after cuts from the Trump administration.
Federal Judge Allison D. Burroughs wrote in a fiery September decision that the Trump administration was putting forward "arbitrary" grant terminations in the name of enacting its agenda, "no matter the cost."
However, on Thursday, the Trump administration appealed Burroughs' decision — meaning that the case, if it moves along, could go as high as the Supreme Court.
"It's pretty amazing the speed at which Trump is progressing," said Scheiring, former member of the Hungarian Parliament. "He's really catching up very quickly. Orbán, it took him 15 years to get there. Give Trump a few more years and he will overtake Orbán in autocratization."
'This will be a long struggle'
What worries Kim Scheppele — a Princeton professor who was the founding co-director of the gender studies program at Central European University — is that court decisions backing Harvard or protests on campus can only slow down the inevitable.
"At this stage, all we can do is throw sand in the gears and slow it down. The federal government has so much power that it could crush any university it wants to, and it could do it overnight," Scheppele said.
The U.S. will need to find its own path because Hungary has no "great stories of success," she said.
But to Pető, great stories of success aren't the point. Each person must still do their own work to resist.
Before fleeing Hungary, Pető said she learned to teach in hostile environments. Watching how easily her university was defeated "sharpened her awareness" and her determination to fight back.
"When the enemy is overpowering … the only viable strategy is survival. Keep the jobs you have. Take seriously every class you teach. Do not engage in unnecessary fights," Pető said. "This will be a long struggle. The attacks are transnational attacks impacting the national level. This is the same anti-liberal playbook played out in a different context."
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