Central European University's move to Vienna

After tensions with Hungary's government made the location of Central European University in Budapest increasingly intolerable, it is moving to Vienna. Shalini Randeria, a U.S.-born academic whose research in sociology and social anthropology focused on questions of forced displacement now finds herself navigating the displacement of an entire university, including faculty and students, to a new home.

Vienna and Budapest share significant histories as former Austrian Imperial cities. Both also share histories of persecuting Jews. Central European University's move from Budapest to Vienna, and renovating a former early 20th century progressive psychiatric hospital for its campus, lays open one of the most difficult connections between the two cities - CEU's new campus was used between 1940 and 1945 by Nazis to torture and kill 789 children in their euthanasia program.

George Soros, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and prominent liberal political figure, is the major benefactor of CEU. The relocation of CEU to Vienna, a dislocation from Soros' own birthplace in Hungary, and to a campus first representing progressive ideas that were turned into oppression, provides a canvas for learning about the potential of horror and hope in human existence that is likely not to be rivaled by any other university in the world.