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  • Central European University

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    Central European University is a graduate-level "crossroads" university where faculty and students from more than 100 countries come to engage in interdisciplinary education, pursue advanced scholarship, and address some of society's most vexing problems.

    It is accredited in both the United States and Hungary and offers English-language Master's and doctoral programs in the social sciences, the humanities, law, management, and public policy. Located in the heart of Central Europe -- Budapest, Hungary -- CEU has developed a distinct academic and intellectual focus, combining the comparative study of the region's historical, cultural, and social diversity with a global perspective on good governance, sustainable development, and social transformation.

    Founded in 1991 at a time when revolutionary changes were throwing off the rigid orthodoxies imposed on Central and Eastern Europe, CEU is based on the premise that the critical discussion of ideas can counterbalance human fallibility and that this critical spirit can be sustained best in societies where citizens have the freedom to scrutinize competing theories and openly evaluate and change government policies.

    With approximately 1,400 students and 370 faculty members from more than 130 countries, CEU is one of the world's most densely international universities. Its rare mix of nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures creates an ideal environment for examining such "open society" subjects as emerging democracies, transitional economies, media freedom, nationalism, human rights, and the rule of law. It also brings a multifaceted perspective to all aspects of community life.

    CEU is known for excellence in teaching and research—with purpose. At the core of its mission lies a set of principles: the pursuit of truth wherever it leads, respect for the diversity of cultures and peoples, and commitment to resolving differences through debate, not denial.

    CEU is a unique institution:

    • Our 1,500 masters' and doctoral students come from 117 countries.
    • Our faculty is drawn from 51.
    • We are accredited in Hungary.
    • The United States and our mission is to teach the values of an open society: free minds, free politics, and free institutions.

    We recently celebrated our first 25 years, and in that time, we have attained world-class rankings in teaching and research, we have graduated almost 14,000 alumni who carry our values back to their home countries, and we have opened brand new campus buildings in the historic heart of one of Europe's greatest cities.

    CEU's mission to defend free and open societies is more urgent than ever. As President, I have launched the Re-Thinking Open Society Project, a series of seminars, lectures, and conferences that will renew our mission in light of the new challenges it faces in the 21st century. We are also preparing a new strategic plan to guide the University through the next five years. That plan, when completed in June 2017, will commit the University to strengthen our masters' and doctoral teaching, to build on our success as a research institution and, most exciting of all, to work with the Open Society Foundation to develop a network of universities like ourselves devoted to furthering the open society mission.

    Our founder, George Soros, demonstrated uncommon vision in providing the resources that enable us to accomplish our mission. Now it is up to the CEU community: its dedicated staff, world-class teachers, and adventurous alumni to grow our resources, manage them prudently, and invest them in projects that further our mission. We want to enlarge our community of support to reach out to philanthropists, foundations, corporations, and other private donors who share our dedication to education for free minds and free spirits.

    We are proud of our path-breaking research in a range of disciplines, new initiatives in emerging fields like cognitive and network science, together with our longstanding commitments in Roma education and leadership training and our recent pioneering work in opening up higher education to Europe's new refugees and migrants. These are examples of the work that best serves our unique mission.

    In a world of polarization and division, a world where the status of facts is so profoundly contested, the work of universities like ours in bringing men and women together around shared respect for knowledge is more important than ever. We must remain dedicated to teaching our students that knowledge is the only sure guide to moral choice and public policy. Universities like ours cannot retreat from the world. We must always be doing our part to help understand our societies' problems if we are all to survive and prosper. We must never stop asking: what is incontestable in our understanding? How do we expand the content of knowledge? If we genuinely care about knowledge, if we winnow the grain of knowledge from the chaff of ideology, partisanship, rhetoric, and lies, we will be doing the University's part to defend free and open societies. Hungarian poet Attila Jozsef was right: all of this is hard. But nothing is more important.

    Central European University is a graduate institution of advanced research and teaching dedicated to socially and morally responsible intellectual inquiry. CEU's distinctive educational program builds on the great American universities' research tradition on the most valuable Central European intellectual traditions on the international diversity of its faculty and students on its commitment to social service and on its history of academic and policy achievements in transforming the closed communist inheritance. CEU is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. It aims to excel in the mastery of established knowledge, the courage to pursue new knowledge in the humanities, the social sciences, law and management, and engagement in promoting applications for each, mainly through their policy implications.

    CEU is a new model for international education, a center for studying contemporary economic, social and political challenges, and a source of support for building open and democratic societies that respect human rights and human dignity.

    In 1989, a group of academic intellectuals—most of them prominent members of the anti-totalitarian democratic opposition—conceptualized an international university that would help facilitate the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Among them was George Soros, the Hungarian-American financier, and philanthropist, who founded Central European University two years later.

    Soros championed the project because he understood that open societies could flourish only with people in positions of responsibility who are educated to promote them. His vision was to recruit professors and students worldwide to build a unique institution, one that would train future generations of scholars, professionals, politicians, and civil society leaders to contribute to building open and democratic societies that respect human rights and adhere to the rule of law.

    Beginning with 100-plus students in 1991, CEU held its first classes in Prague with students from 20 countries, primarily within the region. The University moved to Budapest in 1993.

    Central European University
    Founding year: 1991
    Website: Visit Website
    Number of students: 1500
    Genders Accepted: Mixed (Co-education)
    Leadership: Michael lgnatieff (Rector)
    Number of staff: 0
    Type: Universities

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    Address: Central European University, Nádor u. 9., Budapest , 1051, Hungary



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