The War on Universities: Illiberal Tactics in Turkey, Hungary, and the United States
2026-08-12
Illiberal governments increasingly target universities as sites of political dissent and ideological opposition. This paper compares three illustrative cases—Boğaziçi University under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Central European University under Viktor Orbán, and elite US universities under Donald Trump—to examine how illiberal governments deploy state power against autonomous, high-profile, liberal-aligned institutions of higher education, and how students and faculty respond. Although universities are not always bastions of pluralism, tolerance, and democracy, attacks on universities are often concurrent with illiberal governance. We argue that illiberal governments perceive universities as vanguards of hegemonic liberalism and as partisan opponents in certain contexts, and that state repression operates along a continuum of coercion, legal displacement, and discursive delegitimation. These attacks on academic autonomy trigger varied responses—from mobilization, to fragmentation, to withdrawal—shaped by domestic political opportunity structures, the intensity of state repression, and campus culture. By conceptualizing the university as a contested political institution rather than a neutral educational space, this article contributes to broader debates on democratic backsliding, populism, culture wars, and higher education.