Ten thousand students, staff and their supporters marched through Budapest on Sunday April 02,2017 evening in solidarity with the Central European University (CEU)
New legislation on foreign universities, due for debate in parliament on 5 April, would cripple CEU and could force it to move abroad.
Rector Michael Ignatieff says it will stay open, and stay in Budapest.
"We just want to be left alone," Mr Ignatieff, a former Canadian Liberal Party leader, told
"The achievements of the university speak for themselves," he added.
CEU is ranked among the top 200 universities in the world in eight disciplines, and excels in political science and international studies.
The attack on the CEU is the latest battle in a war against liberalism, declared by the increasingly radical right-wing Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban.
George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier who founded the university in 1991 and still partly funds it, is the main target.
Mr Orban is a critic of liberal NGOs partially funded by Mr Soros. Officials from the governing Fidesz party have repeatedly referred to CEU as "the Soros university".
University officials reply that Mr Soros is part of a 21-member board of trustees, and has no role in the day-to-day running of the university.
Students and professors from several other Budapest universities also took part in Sunday's march, defying government claims that the CEU has unfair advantages over them.
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