Closing Space for Open Society
The operating environment has gotten so ugly for Open Society, which gave $3.6 million to 46 different groups in Hungary in 2016, that the foundation announced this week they will relocate their office from Budapest, Soros’ birth city, to Berlin.
Open Society’s decision to relocate from Budapest is a dramatic and visible statement, but it is only one small part of a more complex story about how a multibillion dollar global foundation dedicated to advancing democratic freedom is responding to a rising tide of forces that stand opposed to those same values. The foundation’s leaders have not publicly alluded to any major strategic pivot, but they do acknowledge that Open Society has begun to think and act differently in some important ways...