It is, said the president of the Australian Academy of Science, an “urgent and unparalleled opportunity” to grab the best U.S. minds for Australia. The president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore agrees, but thinks the chaos in U.S. academia is, instead, a “golden opportunity” for Asian universities.
Au contraire, says President Macron of France. As his country’s universities launch programs of “scientific asylum” for researchers fleeing the U.S., the time is right, he says, to “Choose France for Science”.
Perhaps not since the victorious Allies competed to entice Germany’s best scientists in 1945 has there been such overt competition to nab a country’s intellectual human capital.
But, says Sir John Bell, the head of Britain’s Ellison Institute of Technology, there’s probably no need to be greedy. If he is to be believed, such is the atmosphere in U.S. academia that there will soon be enough scientific refugees to go round for everyone. “I’ve got the best guys in the best universities in America all saying, ‘When can we move?’” he said.
This is not the direction the brain drain normally goes. No institutions in the world match the U.S. universities for wealth or resources. Few match them for reputation. Fewer still can offer comparable salaries. Of the past 20 British-born Nobel laureates, ten have chosen to end their careers in the U.S.
But there is something else that universities outside the U.S. lack: President Trump.
Since his election, academics in institutions viewed by Republicans as bastions of left-wing thought have increasingly feared that they are under attack. The Trump administration is looking to cut $21 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health—almost halving the budget of the world’s largest medical funder. The man ultimately in charge of it, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not viewed by researchers as a friend of science; he has repeatedly attacked vaccines, and on one occasion backed the idea that aircraft contrails are a secret plot to spray the population with chemicals.
So far, RFK’s pledge to stop “this crime” of “chemtrails” has gone unfulfilled. But other Trump administration promises have not. As part of a push against perceived “wokeness” in academic institutions, billions in funding has been withheld from Ivy League universities unless they comply with demands that include shutting diversity programs. Harvard alone has had over $2 billion in funds frozen.
These tribulations have not gone unnoticed abroad. Patrick Cramer, president of Germany’s Max Planck institutes, wrote to the president of Harvard to offer solidarity. “Threats to science anywhere are threats to science everywhere,” he said while also, with marginally less solidarity, setting up a “transatlantic program” to attract talent from places just like Harvard.
It is too soon to know whether this is translating into migration. But speaking to the House of Lords science and technology committee, Bell mirrored the words of his international rivals. “There’s a massive opportunity,” he said.
He is trying to get top scientists for the Ellison Institute, a big new research facility on the outskirts of Oxford, and he is hearing the same thing from potential recruits.
“Do the thought experiment. You’re an outstanding scientist. You’re sitting in an American institution. Things are not looking good. You know for sure they’re going to be bad for four years. They’re probably going to be bad for eight years. It’ll take another four years to get the thing back on its feet. If you’re a great scientist in your late forties or fifties, you’re not going to sit it out, are you? No way.”
Now a race is on. The Max Planck institutes are not alone in freeing up routes for U.S. scientists. The Australian Academy of Science said the country had to “act swiftly…to attract the smartest minds leaving the United States”, announcing a global talent program. Aix-Marseille University in France has instituted a “Safe Place for Science” scheme.
Vrije Universiteit in Brussels has reallocated funds to create a hotline for Belgium-curious U.S. academics. “U.S universities…are victims of political and ideological interference,” said Jan Danckaert, the university rector. “They are seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.”
Yet is this wishful thinking? Will scientists really flee a continent where, as some see it, science is being cut for ideological reasons, only to end up in one where science is being cut for economic ones?
While Europe might claim to offer more freedom in the academic sense, it certainly has less in the monetary sense. In the U.K. a recent report from the Office for Students forecast that 72 percent of institutes could be in deficit next year and would need to take “increasingly bold action” to tackle falling income and rising costs.
This is one reason why politicians and academics are trying to ring-fence specific funds. In the Netherlands, the science minister said that spending more to bring in talent would pay for itself. “Top scientists are worth their weight in gold,” he said.
Of course, European academics like to think this is about more than mere money. In a speech to the European parliament, Ekaterina Zaharieva, EU research commissioner, invoked the very philosophy of science.
Citing the way U.S. cuts are particularly affecting specific topics that Republicans view as political—such as research into climate change, vaccines and minorities—she said intellectual endeavor itself was under attack.
“As the birthplace of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, Europe has a historical responsibility to defend academic freedom,” she said.
But, she didn’t need to add, for a sclerotic continent that is worried it is falling behind economically and technologically, this is also a historic opportunity to nab some valuable academics on the cheap.
Tom Whipple covers science for The Times of London
