BUDAPEST — Academic freedom is a cornerstone of democracy and a free society. As Montesquieu argued in “The Spirit of the Laws,” a text the American founders revered, a free society is defined by robust self-governing institutions that regulate themselves under the law and pursue their objectives without interference from government.

Academic freedom is a threat to authoritarian regimes everywhere. In Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, the European University at St. Petersburg has endured repeated attempts to shut it down. In Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, the government is closing campuses and jailing students and teachers.

The latest threat to academic freedom is occurring in the heart of Europe. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has introduced a bill in Parliament that would effectively abolish the freedom of Central European University, a private American-Hungarian graduate institution (of which I am the rector and president) that has been granting American- and Hungarian-accredited masters and doctoral degrees for more than 20 years.

The bill would forbid the university from issuing its American degrees, require it to open a campus in the United States (it operates only in Budapest) and put it under the control of the Hungarian government. The government would have the power to deny work permits to faculty members from outside the European Union and use the visa system to restrict the university’s ability to choose its students.