International Far Right Creating Its Own Higher Education Institutions

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https://globalextremism.org/post/far-right-higher-education/

As the international far right grows in influence, a whole ecosystem of institutions such as media, think tanks, publishing firms, and lobby groups, have arisen to support their agenda. One overlooked aspect of the development of these institutions has been the creation of far-right universities and research centers and far-right groups’ promotion of them as legitimate centers of study.

Unlike other universities, or private academic institutions with religious or other affiliations, far-right universities are entrenched within the broader far-right network and are oriented more toward political indoctrination and providing support for the broader far right, rather than traditional curricula. Like the transnational conferences that are organized by far-right groups, their institutions of higher education also tend to be deeply linked with each other (see the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) report on the transnational far-right conference network here). 

These new or reformed “educational” institutions are usually justified on the basis that traditional universities are infected with “woke” biases, anti-conservative initiatives, or lack protections for free speech, usually meaning they have protocols against hate speech. While the curriculum of these institutions differ, their ideological positioning affects these institutions’ views on LGBTQ+ issues, pejoratively referred to “gender ideology,” the role of religion, and policies related to diverse student bodies. In many cases, they promote ahistorical and pseudo-scientific “research.”

Within the transnational far-right network, these institutions train students, host far-right intellectuals, put on large conferences, and provide funding for events. In illiberal democracies like Hungary, they are also used to produce propaganda for the regime and to train bureaucrats and teachers, who by government policy are directed to these institutions. Very often, the universities closely collaborate with far-right political figures or representatives of far-right think tanks. Some of these centers were founded by far-right political leaders, while others appeared after an illiberal government came to power.

Here are seven universities linked to the transnational far right.

Centro de Estudios Universitarios (Center for University Studies, CEU)

President: Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza y Gómez de Valugera 
Locations: Madrid, Spain; Valencia, Spain; Sevilla, Spain; Barcelona, Spain
https://www.ceu.es/
https://www.uspceu.com/en/ 
https://www.uaoceu.es/en 

Centro de Estudios Universitarios (Center of University Studies, CEU) is a private, Spain-based university founded in 1933 by the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas (Catholic Association of Propagandists, ACdP), with campuses in Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, and Barcelona. The ACdP is an old organization, established in 1908, by individuals with ties to the Catholic Church. Its mission is to spread Catholicism in a time where increasing secularism means less power for the Church. CEU History Professor Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza is the leader of ACdP. 

Many of the laboratories and institutes associated with the CEU are aligned with socially conservative issues of importance to the Roman Catholic Church. The CEU Instituto de Humanidades Angel Ayala, for example, organizes conferences on “Bioethics,” a signifier for abortion, sexual identity, assisted reproduction, such as IVF, and other issues that they oppose, while the CEU Instituto de Estudios de la Familia (CEU Institute for the Study of the Family) has an entire research program oriented toward rejecting “gender ideology,” which they refer to as “a worldview with a totalizing aim that tries to reach and explain society, the man-woman relationship, the family, education, politics, legislation, language, art, cinema, etc. according to its postulates.” 

Some of CEU’s academic centers have developed explicit ties with the transnational far-right movement and its institutions. This is the case, for example, of the Centro Fundamentos y Valores Cristianos de Europa (Center for Christian Fundamentals and Values in Europe, CFVC), led by Álvaro Silva de Soto, whose mission is “studying and making known the roots of European culture.” They have partnered with the Italian far-right governing party Fratelli d’Italia’s (Brothers of Italy, FdI) think tank Nazione Futura, the propagandist organization Center for Fundamental Rights created by the regime of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which organizes CPAC Hungary, as well as the far-right publication The European Conservative, and the think tank of Spanish far-right party VOX, Fundación Disenso (Dissent Foundation). Similarly, CEU professors, researchers and other academics are often represented at far-right conferences, such as Patricia Santos who attended the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Budapest Summit. MCC is another arm of the Orbán regime and an academic center itself.

By far, however, the most interconnected CEU center within the transnational far right is the Centro de Estudios, Formación y Análisis Social (Center for Studies, Training and Social Analysis, CEFAS). According to its mission statement, CEFAS operates more as an activist organization than a simple academic center: “At the service of the Catholic Association of Propagandists (ACdP) we work to build a society based on the values of Christian humanism and respect for the dignity of the person. At CEFAS we propose a national regeneration based on conservative and Christian principles.” It claims to promote the “fundamentals of the Doctrine Social of the Church in the cultural and political spheres, by carrying out courses, conferences and publications.” In CEFAS’ journal El Debate (The Debate), articles can be found critiquing Critical Race Theory and proposing a Catholic alternative, promoting the conservative anti-immigrant and natalist demographic policies of Hungary, and articles lamenting demographic change due to Muslim immigration and migration from “non-Western countries.”

CEU plays a key role in organizing conferences that political figures from the European far right attend. The first major event of this type was “Hacia una renovación cristiana de Europa” (Towards a Christian renewal of Europe), which took place in March 2022 at CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. This large conference included members of the ACdP, CEU staff, and members of far-right parties, think tanks, institutions, and Church representatives. The most prominent of the CEU figures was de Mendoza, affiliated with both the ACdP and CEU. Other think tank officials included Nazione Futura and Fondazione Tatarella President Francesco Giubilei, Instytut Zachodni (Western Institute in Poznań, Poland) researcher and professor at the University of Brussels David Engels, Rod Dreher, a fellow for the Orbánist Danube Institute, MCC Board of Trustees Chairman, and Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), MCC General Director Zoltán Szalai, Miguel Angel Quintana Paz, Professor at Marion Maréchal Le Pen’s Madrid campus of the Institut de Sciences Sociales, Économiques et Politiques (Institute of Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, ISSEP), and editor of The European Conservative Alvino-Mario Fantini. Politicians who attended the conference included former Spanish MP for VOX Francisco Jose Contreras, French MEP and Executive Vice-President of Les Républicains (LR) François-Xavier Bellamy, and Spanish MEP for the Partido Popular Isabel Benjumea.

This collaboration with Orbánist, Christian Nationalist, and far-right figures has grown. In October 2023, CEFAS held the “Conservatism Today” conference in Madrid alongside the far-right publication The European Conservative. Like the previous conference, CEU and ACdP speakers were present in addition to several intellectuals from Orbánist circles, The European Conservative editor Fantini and the Head of the Center for European Studies at the MCC Rodrigo Ballester. Politicians from far-right parties Domovinski Pokret (Homeland Movement, DP) in Croatia, and Vox in Spain were present as speakers, as well as Michal Semin, one of the early organizers of the anti-LGBTQ+ organization World Congress of Families (WCF) and Czech partner of WCF. Representatives of far-right think tanks included Guillermo Graino from Fundación Disenso, director of the Spanish-based magazine Revista Centinela (Sentinel Magazine) Rodrigo Gómez, and Miguel Angel Quintana Paz from ISSEP Madrid.

In September 2023, CEFAS held the “Advancing Freedom” conference alongside New Direction, the European think tank for the EU party grouping European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). While the ECR began as a Eurosceptic group of center-right and right-wing parties, it has evolved to include a significant far-right faction with the addition of members from the Italian Brothers of Italy party (FdI) and Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, PiS). Present at this event was the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, Fantini, Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Executive Director Frank Furedi, and Ballester. 

Most recently, CEFAS organized the conference “Construyendo la alianza iberoamericana” (Building the Ibero-American Alliance) in Madrid in March 2024 alongside the Buenos Aires Forum, which included the participation of “more than 20 European and Ibero-American institutions with the aim of strengthening ties, defending the values that unite us and proposing new initiatives.” Again, pro-Orbán individuals featured heavily at this event including MCC’s Ballester and Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández, Vajk Farkas and Ana Bolio from the Center for Fundamental Rights, and Enikö Györi, MEP for Orbán’s far-right party Fidesz. Representatives from the right-wing Spanish party Partido Popular (PP) attended as speakers as did a number of individuals from the CEU. Representatives of far-right think tanks and organizations, such as Foro Madrid, Fundación Disenso, the Revista Centinela, Res Publica, and the Adam Smith Center, were also present at the event.

Other smaller events held by CEFAS include speeches given by Heritage’s Gonzalez, in March, 2022, MCC’s Ballester in April, 2022, and Santiago Abascal, leader of the Spanish far-right party VOX in September, 2022 (the dates are based on when their videos were published on YouTube).

CEFAS members also regularly participate in other international conferences such as the III Foro Madrid in Buenos Aires on September 5, 2024, and Nazione Futura’s “Italian Conservatism” conference in Rome in September 2022. The III Foro Madrid was of interest not only because of the participation of Hungarian and American think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the ACTON Institute, and the Center for Fundamental Rights, but also the large number of leaders of far-right parties from Latin America, including Argentinian President Javier Milei, Paraguayan Senator Gustavo Leite, and leader of Chile’s Partido Republicano José Antonio Kast. Also present were several elected officials from VOX, including Abascal and José María Figaredo, as well as FdI MEP Carlo Fidanza. The meeting ended with the reading of a declaration in which the participants expressed their intent to “continue waging a relentless cultural battle to defend the West against destructive cultural Marxism and totalitarian social engineering in all its manifestations, be it called wokism, progressivism or socialism of any kind.”

Continuing their collaboration with Orbánist institutions, members of CEFAS recently attended the Center for Fundamental Rights’ “Wokebusters Academy” in Balatonszepezd, Hungary, in September 2024, which aims to teach the “Hungarian strategy” at “combating woke ideology. They also sent representatives in early September 2024 to study “new progressive ideologies that cancel and reject the Christian humanist tradition of the West” at the American think tank Heritage Foundation, responsible for drafting the rights-stripping project 2025.

Collegium Intermarium (CI)

Rector: Artur Górecki 
Location: Warsaw, Poland
https://collegiumintermarium.org/ 

The Collegium Intermarium (CI) is a far-right institution based in Warsaw, Poland, that was founded in 2021. It is characterized primarily by its ties to the far-right anti-LGBTQ+ think tank Ordo Iuris (Order of Law in Latin) that seeks to create a “Godly elite.” In line with Ordo Iuris’s goals, Collegium Intermarium has as its mission providing an education “based on the classical values of European civilization: Roman legal culture, Greek philosophy and Christian ethics.” The name “Intermarium” is Latin for “between the seas,” and refers to the concept of a historical union between Poland and other Central European countries between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas, often promoted by far-right groups such as the former far-right Polish ruling party, PiS.

Ordo Iuris is a far-right think tank that attempts to spread its anti-LGBTQ+ views and policies by way of the legal process. In Eastern Europe, Ordo Iuris has become a critical node for anti-LGBTQ+ far-right groups including the American anti-LGBTQ+ legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and has strong ties with the Polish far-right PiS, and even the further right antisemitic and xenophobic party Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość (Confederation Liberty and Independence Party) (see GPAHE’s previous reporting on Ordo Iuris here).

In March 2023, the Collegium received a large subsidy from the state budget totalling at least PLN 2.7 million (about 700,000 USD). Despite the endowment, however, for the 2023-2024 academic year, the Collegium only accepted one new student to the program, bringing their total to 15. The courses at the Collegium are generally reflective of Ordo Iuris’s ideology and mission. Their main programs of study include a law program to prepare for a legal career, “Faith and Science” focusing on “the relationship between natural knowledge and revealed knowledge (theological knowledge),” and the “Ethics of virtues and real good in the era of postmodernity” for teachers.

Ordo Iuris co-founder Jerzy Kwaśniewski is the current chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Collegium, and among the the Collegium’s teaching staff are Filip Ludwin, Bartosz Lewandowski, Jarosław Krzewicki, Łukasz Bernaciński, and Marcin Olszówka, all from Ordo Iuris, testifying to their heavy involvement in the university. There’s also Grégor Puppinck, Marcin Kulczyk, and Ligia De Jesús Castaldi from the anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ). Also on staff are MEP Stephen Nikola Bartulica, former leader of the Croatian far-right party Domovinski pokret (Homeland Movement), ADF International allied attorney Viktor Kostov, William L. Saunders, the chair of Federalist Society Religious Liberties Practice Group, a part of American Leonard Leo’s influential far-right legal network, Stefano Gennarini from the American and rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), and head of MCC’s European Center for Political Philosophy András Lánczi. In addition, there is the former Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Justice Łukasz Piebiak and judge of the District Court of Warsaw, who was allegedly involved in the “Afera hejterska” (Hate Scandal), when a group of high-ranking individuals acted as an “organized criminal group” to “disparage independent judges defending the rule of law” during the previous PiS government. Piebiak was allegedly the leader of this group. There is also American “ex-gay activist” Robert Oscar Lopez, who compared LGBTQ+ parents to slave owners and same-sex adoption to “the cultural genocide practices once used against blacks and Indians,” and wrote an amicus curiae brief against same-sex marriage for the American Supreme Court in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which legalized such marriages.

In its three years of operations, the Collegium has developed partnerships with Le Pen’s far-right university ISSEP and the Polish university Zamojska Academy.

Hillsdale College

President: Larry P. Arnn
Locations: Hillsdale, Michigan; Washington, D.C.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/ 

Hillsdale College, based in Hillsdale, Mich., is a private college founded on “traditional, Christian values,” that is a major player in the transnational far-right network. It also has a campus in Washington D.C. The college was established in 1844 by members of the Free Will Baptists and began moving into the orbit of the conservative movement in the 1960s, when it attempted to bypass federal civil rights laws requiring the reporting of statistics on the racial makeup of their student body. Decades ago, the college decided to refuse federal funding in order to avoid disclosing its student demographics and adhering to Title IX requirements on cases of sexual discrimination. 

This dedication to the far-right cause continues to the current day. Despite ostensibly being a liberal arts college, Hillsdale is one of the main universities in the country promoting the authoritarian, rights-stripping Project 2025, organized by far-right think tank the Heritage Foundation, alongside Liberty University and Patrick Henry College (PHC) (for more on Project 2025, see GPAHE’s report entitled “Project 2025: The Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism” here).

Hillsdale has an incredibly homogenous teaching staff, which noticeably does not include any people of color on its faculty website page. Hillsdale has a tendency to recruit professors that have backgrounds working at the far-right Claremont Institute, where John Eastman, one of its staffers, is well-known for his involvement in the attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election certification.Testifying to further ties to Claremont, the current president, Larry P. Arnn, who sits on the boards of both Hillsdale and the Heritage Foundation, was one of the original founders of the Claremont Institute. In mid-October, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, known, among other things, for his new position on the board of trustees of the New College of Florida and raging against Critical Race Theory, also claimed to be joining Hillsdale as a part-time distinguished fellow, where he would teach short courses and give lectures.

Hillsdale professors and other employees are well integrated into the transnational far-right network and regularly attend large, influential gatherings where major far-right political figures are present. Michael Anton, who works with both the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale’s Kirby Center, which aims to study the Constitution using original source documents, is one such person. In a recent report published by GPAHE, Anton appeared as one of the most influential figures in the transnational far-right conference network (see the report here). Anton has been an invited speaker at CPAC Hungary in 2023, the first, second, and third iterations of the far right, pro-Orbán National Conservatism Conference (NatCon), the NatCon event in London in May 2023, the 3rd Danube Geopolitical Summit, and the Pro-Natal Conference in December 2023. Assistant Professor and Research Fellow David Azerrad is another Hillsdale representative who is a frequent speaker at far-right conferences. Like Anton, he was also invited to NatCon I, III, and IV, as well as CPAC Hungary 2022. Similarly, History Professor Wilfred M. McClay was a speaker at NatCon III. 

The individuals invited to speak at Hillsdale lectures and conferences are almost exclusively from the right to far-right of the political spectrum. Their “Freedom Library” of videos from past lecturers includes speeches from COVID conspiracist Naomi Wolf, anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Chaya Raichik (owner of the anti-LGBTQ+ “Libs of TikTok”), former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and correspondent for the anti-immigrant think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Todd Bensman. Other lecturers include Rufo, anti-trans correspondents for the far-right media outfit The Daily Wire Michael J. Knowles and Matt Walsh, election denialist Dinesh D’Souza, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, far-right former Republican candidate for president Vivek Ramaswamy, far-right journalist Andy Ngo, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Writers for the university’s publication Imprimis have included CIS’ Bensman, who argued in favor of withdrawing from the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which regulates government standards for handling asylum claimants, Rufo, who wrote about a “Transgender Empire,” and the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, known for pushing pseudo-scientific works on race and IQ, particularly the discredited The Bell Curve, and who advocated for abolishing the Department of Education.

Much of Hillsdale’s curriculum is also far to the right. In their course on “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” for example, the authors of the course tie 20th century examples of socialism to the “cultural marxism” conspiracy theory, writing that it “has led to the rise of racial tensions, radical feminism, transgender ideology, open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, the unequal protection of the laws, and the loss of our basic rights.” This initially led social media company Meta to remove their Facebook page, only to return the account after push-back from the college. The Hillsdale curriculum focuses on learning “the classics,” such as philosophy, Latin, classical literature, and logic and rhetoric.

Hillsdale recently released its “1776 Curriculum” for K-12 schools, which portrays the United States as an “an exceptionally good country” throughout history. This curriculum responds to the 1619 Project, which explores the legacy of slavery and racism in American history. Inherent in the Hillsdale curriculum is the notion of American exceptionalism, denial of the idea that racism continues to permeate American society, the idea of one “true” understanding of history, and the Constitution as a holy writ. Moreover, in an effort to inject ideological narratives throughout the history curriculum, it refers to revisionist narratives about the Jamestown, Va., settlement’s supposed early experiments with “communism” to demonstrate why the 20th century economic system was flawed, revisionist depictions of slavery, such as the myth that all the founders were originally against slavery, and advocates for a “Republic” rather than “democracy” (majority rule), which Hillsdale apparently considers as tyrannous. 

Hillsdale has sought to spread this worldview by way of a network of private charter schools that it has been partnering with across the country. As of 2022, Hillsdale’s network consisted of 24 schools in 13 states, and Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee had invited the college to start 50 schools in the state using state funds. Since then, several locations in the state have been approved, however, after a recording was made public of Arnn telling Governor Lee that “the [public school] teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country,” there has been more local resistance to the new charter schools.

Hillsdale College staff were infamously tied up in the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. According to reporting from The New York Times, Robert E. Norton II, their general council, and Hillsdale-affiliated lawyer Ian Northon, were involved in concocting the plan to deploy fake Trump electors in Michigan, while Arnn counseled then-Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the vote in the House of Representatives.

Institut de Sciences Sociales, Économiques et Politiques (Institute of Social, Economic, and Political Science, ISSEP

President: Sylvain Roussillon
Locations: Lyon, France; Madrid, Spain
https://issep.com/
https://www.issep.es/

The Institut de Sciences Sociales, Économiques et Politiques (Institute of Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, ISSEP) is a private university based in Lyon, France, and Madrid, Spain, founded by French MEP Marion Maréchal Le Pen, a former Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) deputy from the Vaucluse region and ex-spokesperson for Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête (Reconquest, REC), and Thibaut Monnier, former RN MP from Isère and member of REC starting in 2021. 

ISSEP is not officially recognized by the French state. It provides non-accredited bachelors and masters-level degrees in political science and project management, with shorter courses in “communications and electoral campaigning.” Due to its lack of accreditation, it receives no public funding and relies heavily on tuition fees and private donations. Because of this, ISSEP has been in financial trouble since its inception. Previous reporting has noted that part of the staff are not paid and others have been doing “volunteer work.”

Since its founding, Le Pen has always had in mind the concept of a far-right university, or a “metapolitical” project, to train far-right intellectuals and provide a counter-weight to the perceived left-wing influence in French higher education. She and others often refer to the university as an “anti-SciencesPo,” a reference to the French elite university known for educating much of France’s political establishment. She perceives these “woke” influences over education to be pro-LGBTQ+, gender, and climate studies, as well as multiculturalism, all of which she refers to as a kind of “indoctrination.”

Unlike other universities, the focus of Le Pen’s efforts at the university have been less about educating students and more about engaging in the political arena. At the American conservative convention CPAC, Le Pen made clear her goals for the university: “Our combat can not only be electoral: we have to spread our ideas in the media, the culture, and education system, in order to stop the domination of the liberals and socialists. That’s why I recently launched a school of management and political science. The goal? To train the leaders of tomorrow.” ISSEP’s educational program, such as the masters program in “political science and project management,” is more oriented toward training individuals to become a part of far-right parties or groups, developing skills such as “using political communication tools,” “positioning your role and mission within an organization,” and “managing crises,” than teaching traditional political science material. 

Articles on the university’s site make this clear. Instead of putting forward the best that a university can offer, the “News” section of the site instead reads like an opinion page from a far-right publication, with articles by Le Pen including “Cancel culture or when the University “cancels” European culture,” “Abolish the ENA, Macron’s unworthy demagogy,” and “Eric Zemmour: the case that comes at just the right time?” Similarly, ISSEP’s Centre d’Analyse et de Prospective (Center of Analysis and Foresight, CAP) is ostensibly a “laboratory of ideas;” however, again, here one can only find opinionated articles such as “Can reforming the Constitution be enough to control immigration?,” “The temptation to import Communist China’s methods into Europe: revelation by the health crisis,” and “Second impeachment proceedings: Chronicle of Donald Trump’s acquittal,” where the author defends the former president in the wake of the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Unlike the norm at most universities, these “studies” are not peer-reviewed.

ISSEP is notable for consisting of an entire team with strong ties to the French far right. Many of their staff members came from among the ranks of the RN, while others opted to join Zemmour’s REC when it was founded in 2022. For her part, Marion Maréchal Le Pen has been a longtime far-right activist with ties to the French white nationalist Identitarian movement, Christian Nationalists, and monarchists, and represents the far-right fringe of the party that defected from the RN to REC in 2022. She is a strong believer in the white nationalist and antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. At a REC event in 2022, she said: “We must be able, together, to provide answers to the great challenges of the century: the great replacement, the great impoverishment, the great ecological exhaustion, the great anthropological negation or even the great clash of powers.” On March 7, 2022, Le Pen announced she would be stepping down as the general director of the university, in order to support the electoral ambitions of Zemmour, and would be replaced by Monnier. 

Other staff members include former aide to Marine Le Pen and member of the editorial committee of far-right magazine L’Incorrect (The Incorrect), Thibaud Collin. There is also longtime monarchist activist and former leader of the Action Française, Sylvain Roussillon, who is the current President of ISSEP. Roussillon was notably a speaker during the far-right, antisemitic monarchist group Action Française’s annual conference in 2019. The university’s scientific council includes among its members Pascal Gauchon, ex-general secretary of the neo-fascist Party des Forces Nouvelles (New Forces Party) and speaker at the Identitarian Institut Iliade Colloque on May 29, 2021; Raheem Kassam, editor of the London branch of the American far-right outlet Breitbart and advisor to Brexit agitator Nigel Farage; and American paleoconservative intellectual, U.S. correspondent for the Identitarian journal Nouvelle École (New School), and repeat speaker at the white supremacist American Renaissance (AmRen) conference, Paul Edward Gottfried. Gottfried was most recently a speaker at NatCon 2024 in Washington D.C. 

French ISSEP teaching staff include former Front National leader Bruno Gollnish, president of the far-right party La voie du peuple (The Voice of the People, VIA) Jean-Frédéric Poisson, General Secretary of Mouvement pour la France (MPF) Patrick Louis, far-right activist Édouard Husson, who spoke at the “convention de la droite” (Convention of the Right), the NatCon event in Rome in February 2020, and the Identitarian Institut Iliade Colloque on April 2, 2022. Louis represented the university in an interview with the far-right media outlet TV Libertés on June 29, 2023. Another staffer, Oleg Sokolov, a St. Petersburg University professor formerly recruited to work at ISSEP, was arrested in Russia in 2019 for murdering and dismembering a Russian student. ISSEP cut ties with Sokolov upon hearing of the arrest.

Many staff members have participated in Identitarian-aligned events, such as Édouard Husson, ISSEP General Director Monnier, and José Javier Esparza from the Madrid campus, who have all been speakers at the Institut Iliade conferences. Individuals invited to speak at the university also often have strong ties to the far right. This includes the leader of the anti-feminist group Antigones Anne Trewby, British far-right, anti-Muslim intellectual Douglas Murray, far-right TV Libertés host Martial Bild, and Thibaud Gibelin, a fellow at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s pet university Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). 

Also testifying to its official ties to the far right in France is the university’s hosting of the event “Grand Débat” (Great Debate) alongside far-right media outlets Radio Courtoisie and Valeurs Actuelles, and longtime Identitarian activist Thaïs d’Escufon’s legal defense organization for far-right activists, Association de Soutien aux Lanceurs d’Alerte (Association for the Support of Whistleblowers, ASLA). Among those invited to debate were numerous political figures including RN President Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right REC youth group Génération Z, Stanislas Rigault, and François-Xavier Bellamy, from the far-right faction of the right-wing party LR.

ISSEP has developed partnerships with other far-right universities in Europe. On September 30, 2021, Le Pen attended a ceremony in Warsaw, Poland, to formalize ties with the ultra-conservative Collegium Intermarium founded by the anti-LGBTQ+ Polish outfit Ordo Iuris. Ordo Iuris mentioned in a statement that the agreement was in response to a “crisis of civilization and academic life.” She has also developed ties with the Orbánist university MCC in Hungary and organized a large joint conference with them on April 20, 2022. In Russia, she has signed a partnership with the private institution St. Petersburg University in order to develop ties with the country and enlist pro-Putin professors for her Lyon-based campus. In her welcoming speech, St. Petersburg University then-Senior Vice Rector Elena Chernova took note of ISSEP’s relationship to France’s far-right political parties, referencing their ties to “people who built real political careers.” 

In an interview with the Visegrad Post, Le Pen justified these partnerships, not for students, but speaking on the potential for collaboration on far-right projects together: “Faced with this neo-Marxist left, the young generation of conservatives … is willing to work together, going beyond our possible differences in order to be part of a logic of connections, of networking, of pooling strengths and experiences. It is very interesting because it is new and it is growing. When I went to CPAC, the big meeting of American conservatives, I was struck by the network logic of those circles across the Atlantic, in all their diversity. They have this logic of solidarity and this desire to hunt in packs, as the left very often does. In France, we do not have that culture at all, but it seems to me that this is less true elsewhere in Europe.”

In Spain, ISSEP’s Madrid campus also finds its staff full of present and former elected members of the far-right VOX party, which has ties to neo-Nazis and other extremists, and professors from the Spanish Christian nationalist university CEU. Previous reporting has indicated that the staff recruited have a tendency for Franco nostalgism, meaning support for the former longtime Spanish dictator.

Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem (Ludovika – University of Public Service, NKE)

Rector: Gergely Deli
Locations: Budapest, Hungary; Szolnok, Hungary; Baja, Hungary
https://en.uni-nke.hu/

Ludovika – University of Public Service (Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem, NKE) is a Hungarian university with campuses in Budapest, Szolnok, and Baja, that was formed to serve as the modern day version of the Ludovika Academy of the Hungarian Royal Army (Magyar Kiráyi Honvéd Ludovika Akadémia), which existed from 1808 to 1945 to provide officer training and advanced studies for students and active military. The university was reborn on January 1, 2012 in the form of the NKE through the merger of the Zrínyi Miklós National Defence University, the Police College, and the Faculty of Public Administration of Corvinus University of Budapest, which all became their own departments at Ludovika. The university aims to educate future public administration officials, military, and law enforcement, and train current public service members, while also providing the functions of a think tank.

Since its refounding, Ludovika has been one of Viktor Orbán’s pet projects as his government passed a law specifically to govern the new university and injected substantial funds into rebuilding it, upwards of HUF 50 billion (141.9 million USD) from 2012 to 2017 as well as granting the institution a “gross investment of 27,000 square meters of land.” On average, NKE students receive four times as much funding and resources than the average Hungarian student. Orbán personally gave the inauguration ceremony speech on April 4, 2018, justifying its relaunch as part of an effort to protect Hungary from becoming an “immigrant country.” In it, he stated: “We Hungarians have only one homeland […] One bad decision, one step in the wrong direction, and our downhill course will be unstoppable… Once again there are those who want to take our country from us, who want us, too, to become an immigrant country”.

As with the other benefactor of Orbán’s reforms of the education system, the MCC, Ludovika has become entrenched in the world of pro-Orbán government officials, think tanks, and foreign sympathizers. Like the MCC, Ludovika is also run by Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, and is often used as a location for events by Orbánist elites. Ludovika heavily partners with Orbánist think tanks such as the anti-immigrant Migration Research Institute (MRI), the Danube Institute, and the MCC, and representatives of these institutions are often invited to Ludovika events such as the Ludovika Festival.

Among the staff at Ludovika is Balázs Orbán, who has been the chairman of the university’s Advisory Board since 2018, as well as an assistant professor since 2016. There is also the editor-in-chief of The Hungarian Conservative magazine Tamás Magyarics, who is the senior research fellow at the university’s John Lukacs Institute. Gergely Deli, the current rector of Ludovika, made international headlines after he invited the antisemitic, Holocaust-denying former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a conference in May 2024.

Ludovika has a history of terminating the employment of professors who they suspect are opposed to the Orbán government. In December 2019, NKE announced that a professor would be let go after he criticized an analyst from the Orbán propaganda organization Center for Fundamental Rights on social media. Another professor who had worked at Ludovika for over 25 years was let go in October 2019 after he came into conflict with university management for trying to host an EU-sponsored conference on hate crimes, which university officials refused to hold. According to a revision on the law governing the NKE made by Orbán’s party Fidesz in July 2018, the management and maintenance powers once given to several ministers were handed to the post of political director for the prime minister, meaning Balázs Orbán, essentially giving him full control over who is hired at the institution.

Ludovika has also been given special privileges for certain degrees in the country, and monopoly power over others. Starting around September 2017, the Fidesz government mandated that all public servants must have a masters degree in political science specifically from Ludovika. A similar plan is in the making for the education of teachers. The new István Nemeskürty teacher training center would focus on training teachers for the elite, based on the “conservative approach” referred to by Balázs Orbán in an article from late 2023 where he argues that Hungary must “return education to its conservative roots.”

While not as much as the MCC, Ludovika is also slowly being integrated into the transnational far-right network. Representatives of far-right groups from abroad, such as Claremont Institute’s Michael Anton, CIS director Mark Krikorian, former Trump administration official Tibor Peter Nagy Jr., American fellows at the Danube Institute Rod Dreher and Carlos Roa, and Lorenzo Bernasconi, researcher for the far-right Italian party Lega’s think tank Machiavelli Center, have attended NKE events as speakers. At the NatCon event in 2024, President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA) Gladden Pappin spoke about the need for education reform on the basis of “patriotism,” citing as examples the two Orbánist universities in the country, MCC and Ludovika.

Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC)

Director General: Zoltán Szalai
Locations: Brussels, Belgium; Budapest, Hungary; Békéscsaba, Hungary; Debrecen, Hungary; Eger, Hungary; Győr, Hungary; Kaposvár, Hungary; Kecskemét, Hungary; Miskolc, Hungary; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Pécs, Hungary; Révfülöp, Hungary; Szeged, Hungary; Székesfehérvár, Hungary; Szekszárd, Hungary; Szolnok, Hungary; Szombathely, Hungary; Veszprém, Hungary; Zalaegerszeg, Hungary; Arad, Romania; Csíkszereda, Romania; Kászonjakabfalva, Romania; Kolozsvár, Romania; Marosvásárhely, Romania; Nagyvárad, Romania; Sepsiszentgyörgy, Romania; Szatmárnémeti, Romania; Székelyudvarhely, Romania;Dunaszerdahely, Slovakia; Beregszász, Ukraine.
https://mcc.hu/en/ 
https://brussels.mcc.hu/ 

The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) is a university based in Budapest, with campuses in Belgium, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and across Hungary, that pursues the political and ideological agenda of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (see GPAHE’s previous reporting on MCC here). MCC is run by the advisor to Prime Minister Orbán, Balázs Orbán, while the director-general of the pro-Orbán site Mandiner.hu Zoltán Szalai holds a position on the board, as well as former Fidesz MP János Martonyi. The current Minister of Culture and Innovation János Csák holds a position on the Board of Patrons, and another former Fidesz MP, József Szájer, was a trustee until December 2020. Frank Furedi, who recently published an anti-Muslim book, From Decolonization to Islam: Civilization Under Siege?, is the director of MCC’s Brussels campus.

MCC serves as an institution to train far-right intellectuals, and Balázs Orbán stated in an interview with The New York Times that one of his motivations for leading MCC is to instill a sense of “patriotism” in students. Far from being a politically-independent endeavor, the university has been described by Bloomberg as a right-wing “socialization machine.” MCC alumni have reported that the curriculum often includes lectures from pro-Fidesz intellectuals and encourages students to write glowing articles about Hungary and Orbán. Every year, the institution hosts the MCC Feszt (MCC Fest), a large event featuring musicians, lectures from pro-Orbán officials, and public talks by prominent far-right speakers including Americans such as former Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson, The Daily Wire talk show host Michael Knowles, and PragerU founder Dennis Prager, known for producing far-right propaganda for schools.

MCC invests much energy and resources into developing ties with other far-right organizations and intellectuals. For MCC students, the university has a partnership with Quinnipiac University that provides for Hungarian students to study at the university for a year-and-a-half and intern for another year-and-a-half in Hamden, Connecticut. It has other scholarship programs at universities and far-right think tanks in several countries. Previous interns have been hosted by the anti-LGBTQ+ law firm European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), the Italian far-right party Lega’s think tank Centro Studi Machiavelli (Machiavelli Center), Le Pen’s ISSEP in Lyon, the far-right American institutions, Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, and Spanish far-right party VOX’s think tank Fundación Disenso, among others.

Through the MCC Fellowship program, MCC students are sent on three-month internships to far-right institutions friendly to Orbánist groups across Europe and North America, while foreign fellows are regularly invited to spend two weeks to six months at pro-Orbán institutions in a program sponsored by the American Hungary Foundation and the MCC.

The amount of property owned by the MCC is massive, and the endowment that has been given to them for their operations is just as large. This is due to reforms of higher education carried out by the Orbán administration that placed 70 percent of all university assets in semi-private organizations controlled by Fidesz-affiliated individuals called “KEKVAs,” which helped Orbán’s Fidesz monopolize power in the realm of higher education. To reorient the university system to serve their goals, the government began funneling resources into MCC, including a ten percent share of the oil refiner Mol Nyrt and drugmaker Gedeon Richter Nyrt, and oil properties around the country. In total, Fidesz-aligned individuals gifted the university the equivalent of nearly one percent of the country’s GDP, or 1.7 billion USD in 2020. The collegium possesses two campuses in Budapest, 16 locations in other cities in Hungary, and eleven campuses in nearby Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and Belgium, and in May 2023, purchased a stake in Modul University Vienna. The Guardian has reported that the MCC also plans to open up a center in London in a Hungarian cultural center near Trafalgar Square, though the university denies this claim. 

In addition to being a recognized institution of higher learning in Hungary, MCC also serves as a think tank for the transnational far-right movement and a propaganda arm of the Orbán regime, being described by Politico as “leading the country’s ideological assault.” Balázs Orbán has referred to it as a counter-cultural project whose mission is to “influence the European debate.” Conferences and other speaking events organized by the MCC more closely resemble discussions in far-right circles than actual academic endeavors. A few of the events hosted by the Brussels branch of the MCC include “How did the LGBTQ lobby take over the EU?,” “The Diversity Obsession: Can Europe survive multiculturalism?,” “Grooming gangs and the dangers of political correctness,” and “The EU’s gender obsession: undermining education and families?” 

MCC is home to the anti-immigrant Migration Research Institute (MRI), led by Viktor Marsai, which provides a cast of anti-immigrant “experts” for Hungarian television and a means to spread Orbán’s anti-immigrant message abroad. This think tank has been pivotal in the creation of a network of anti-immigrant think tanks in the US, France, and Israel (see GPAHE’s previous reporting here). Other MCC “research centers” are also oriented toward ideological goals. The Institute for Hungarian Unity, founded in November 2023, seeks to identify “new threats to Hungarian identity” so as to “remain Hungarian,” and Director for MMC Institutes Gergely Kitta has identified “cancel culture” in particular as “one of the most dangerous global trends.”

Unlike other universities, MCC makes no pretense to be an ideologically-neutral institution of learning. Instead, the official social media accounts of MCC share posts on political issues as if they were from the mouth of an Orbán loyalist. For example, after the 2024 NatCon conference, an event that was slated to have Orbán and several of his supporters speak, but that has no formal ties to the MCC, was forced to move locations in Brussels under pressure from activists. MCC Brussels responded with outrage, publishing a “free speech declaration” on their website and calling out the Brussels mayor’s “hypocrisy” for pushing to have the event canceled. The university also regularly organizes speeches and press conferences that are more about the political agenda of the government than about academics and science.

MCC is highly integrated into the transnational far-right network, as it sends its staff to major far-right conferences abroad and also hosts its own events where intellectuals from other countries attend. Abroad, several MCC individuals such as Executive Director Frank Füredi, Head of the Center for European Studies Rodrigo Ballester, Head of EU Affairs Bence Ákos Gát, who was previously a political advisor to Orbán, Director General Szalai, and MCC Head of Research David Engels appear often at international far-right conferences such as NatCon, Nazione Futura events, Danube Geopolitical Summits, the November 2023 Worldwide Freedom Initiative conference in Paris, conferences at the Spanish Christian nationalist institute CEU-CEFAS, and The European Conservative conferences.

The MCC branch in Brussels serves as one of the primary meeting points for far-right reactionaries from across Europe. Speakers at the Brussels branch have included President of the Board of the Polish anti-LGBTQ+ group Ordo Iuris Jerzy Kwaśniewski, the deputy editorial director of the far-right magazine Causeur Jeremy Stubbs, Sohrab Ahmari, the founder and editor of the German extremist publication Compact which was nearly banned by the German government, and far-right British academic Matthew Goodwin. Politicians from the European far right also frequent their events: VOX MP José Antonio Fúster and MEPs Margarita de la Pisa Carrión and Jorge Buxadé Villalba, Hrvatski suverenisti (Croatian Sovereignists, HS) MEP Ladislav Ilčić, RN MEP Patricia Chagnon, and RN National Bureau member Mathilde Androuët, MEP Rob Roos from the far-right Dutch Juiste Antwoord 2021 (JA21), and former Hungarian Minister of Justice Judit Varga have all appeared as speakers.

In addition, employees of other pro-Orbán institutions are also commonly invited, including staff from the Migration Research Institute (MRI) and the Danube Institute. Prominent partnerships include a joint event held in May 2024 with the Italian far-right party Lega’s think tank Centro Studi Machiavelli, which featured anti-immigrant activists Mark Krikorian from the American think tank CIS and Viktor Marsai from the MRI (see GPAHE’s reporting on CIS and MRI here).

In Hungary, far-right intellectuals have also been invited to speak as a part of the “Budapest Lectures,” including Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and CIS Executive Director  Mark Krikorian. Roberts, with whom the Orbán regime has developed strong relations over the past several years, spoke about the “growing popularity of neo-Marxism” and the “state increasingly dictating what and how children should learn” in late November 2022, while Krikorian, whose CIS has also developed ties with the Orbánist think tank MRI, spoke about the impacts of immigration on the United States in early February 2022. MEP Marion-Marechal Le Pen, formerly with Eric Zemmour’s REC, and director of the Institut des sciences sociales, économiques et politiques (Institute of Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, ISSEP) gave a lecture on the “current state of education in France” where she lamented what she perceived as the “dangers of the growing far-left ideology.”

New College of Florida

President: Richard Corcoran
Location: Sarasota, Fla.
https://www.ncf.edu/ 

The New College of Florida is a small public liberal arts college in Sarasota, Fla., that had a stellar reputation until Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to “overhaul” it. The effort first started making headlines after DeSantis announced his desire for a “Hillsdale College of the South,” a plan that was outlined in the “Framework for Freedom Budget” he signed on June 15, 2023, which included “$25 million for the institutional overhaul and restructuring of the New College of Florida.” Since then, New College has been included on Heritage’s list of approved colleges in the United States, which they referred to as a “great option.”

In January 2023, the state government began the process of politicizing the university by overhauling the Board of Trustees with loyalists from far-right think tanks and right-wing operatives. These included Hillsdale College Professor Matthew Spalding, also from the Claremont Institute, who has called gender studies “ideologically driven and tendentious,” the editor of the Claremont Institute’s Claremont Review of Books and Professor of Government at Claremont-McKenna College Charles R. Kesler, right-wing Emory University Professor Mark Bauerlein, and Florida lawyer Debra Jenks, who is the only member of the board to have graduated from the New College of Florida. Another appointee, Eddie Speir, who had testified that he was personally driven to “share Christian truths” with the student body and that the new Board of Trustees should fire not only the previous President Patricia Okker, but also all of the sitting faculty, was ultimately not confirmed by the Florida senate to join the board. Former Ascend Wireless Networks CEO and Liberty University graduate Don Patterson was later approved to join the Board of Trustees in November 2023. 

The final member of the new board, Christopher Rufo, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has become known in right-wing circles for his campaigns against what he perceives as “wokeness” in universities. The Interim President Richard Corcoran was previously the chief of staff to Florida Senator Marco Rubio from 2006 to 2010, member of the Florida House Representative from 2010 to 2018, and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2018. In subsequent board meetings, Corcoran was confirmed as the permanent President of the College and awarded an employment contract with a base salary, and additional bonuses and allowances totalling more than $1.1 million per year, one of the highest in the state.

In August 2023, after placing the new members on the board of trustees, DeSantis outlined what he viewed as its successes. This included the “replacement of far-left faculty,” the “elimination of DEI focused positions,” and the “termination of the gender studies program,” which he referred to as “gender indoctrination.” Similarly, on Twitter, Rufo referred to gender studies as “pseudoscience.” In August 2023, university officials placed the library dean on administrative leave, and began ransacking the university library in a highly-publicized purge of books deemed problematic by the new university officials, many of which contained LGBTQ+ themes, that were sent to a landfill. Also discarded were books and other materials from the student-run Gender and Diversity Center, which included information on topics related to the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups. DeSantis’ Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern cheered on the move, writing on Twitter, “Putting gender studies books in the garbage? Great job, New College of Florida.” 

The Board of Trustees immediately began acting as a hostile actor toward students and faculty. Corcoran refused to speak with student journalists or engage in meaningful discourse with the student body. Several openly LGBTQ+ faculty members were fired, Muslim students were left without appropriate food in the dining hall during Ramadan, and LGBTQ+ students complained of an “ongoing trend of discrimination” on campus, leading to a civil rights complaint being filed with the Department of Justice. 

On Twitter, Rufo lashed out at professors and students who criticized the changes, comparing himself to a new Joseph McCarthy, which led to his posts being specifically cited in discrimination complaints against the college. In his statements on the college, Rufo regularly employs militant language, referring to university reform as “battles” and “wars,” speaking of “recapturing” higher education, and referring to discrimination complaints as “attacks” by “left-wing activists,” indicating his general hostility to the very community he was chosen to represent. Because of this, professors began using personal emails for fear of being subpoenaed or fired, while some students reported fearing for their physical safety. During this clampdown on campus activism, the college filed five conduct violation complaints related to the school’s student code of conduct against students who peacefully protested during their commencement ceremony on May 17, 2024.

DeSantis’s actions have led to a complete change in campus culture. Gender-neutral bathrooms were removed, hallway art and student murals in the Hamilton Center were taken down, and student orientation leaders were ordered to remove pins associated with Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ themes. The right-wing student organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA), whose president has significant ties to the MAGA movement and its election denialist factions, started a chapter on the university campus on October 13, 2023. 

These efforts to radically upend the college did not go without challenges from staff and the student body. On February 23, 2023, around 100 students participated in a statewide walk-out of classrooms in protest of the efforts taken by the recently installed Board of Trustees, while hundreds more students, alumni, parents and community members protested before the February 28, 2023, meeting against the board’s targeting of DEI programs. Organizations such as PEN America organized “Freedom to Learn” workshops, the university library organized raffles of banned books during Banned Books Week, and New College alumni and faculty created a webinar series of lectures on topics including gender studies, social justice, racial justice, and systemic racism. The last effort, called “AltLiberalArts” after the college sent them a cease-and-desist letter demanding they change the name from the original name “Alt New College,” featured lectures from philosopher Judith Butler and journalist Masha Gessen. On April 26, 2023, students organized a demonstration outside of the Hamilton Center on the campus in support of civil liberties and academic freedom prior to the final Board of Trustees meeting of the semester, and on May 22, faculty members attempted to censure the Board of Trustees. Alumni, faculty and community members all spoke out at the selection of Corcoran at a Board of Trustees meeting on October 3, 2023, who received the backing of 10 of the 12 trustees but not the support of the student body as expressed in a campus poll at the time. Outside of the venue, students protested with signs reading “Save New College.”

Following the announcement to restructure the university, “more than a third” of the college’s faculty members quit prior to the 2023–2024 academic year, including half of the faculty members who had earned tenure from the board the previous Spring. Following the takeover of the Board, the board members denied without cause several faculty members academic tenure, which protects academic freedom, leading to further uproar from the university community and organizations representing the faculty. Corcoran referred to the decision as a move toward a “traditional liberal arts institution.” Moreover, about 125 out of the College’s 700 person student body chose not to return in the Fall 2023 semester. 

In a Substack post from September 3, 2024, entitled the “The Difficult Work of Academic Reform,” Rufo openly celebrated the resignation of 40 percent of the existing faculty, stating that “while we are careful to avoid partisan language, we freely admit that, in practice, this means that the faculty as a whole will shift rightward.” The New York Times reported on September 22, 2023, that some of the new hires did not have much of a background in academia, but instead in Republican state politics. Others had problematic academic backgrounds. One such hire was Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley, who notoriously wrote a book defending colonialism and calling for its return.

University events organized by the new leadership have since had a far-right angle. The college’s June 1, 2024, conference, for example, entitled “Reversing the Ideological Capture of Universities and Institutions Symposium,” consisted primarily of speakers from right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute, George Mason University’s  Mercatus Center, and Hillsdale College. On October 8th, New College of Florida will be hosting the eugenicist Steven Ernest Sailer, a columnist from the white supremacist site VDARE, and Wilfred Reilly, author of Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, for a public discussion on the campus.