"As Trump’s Policies Worry Scientists, France and Others Put Out a Welcome Mat"

In My Humble Opinion
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/europe-trump-science-research.html?unlocked_article_code=1.704.La7s.wtrw55oJfxcB&smid=url-share

European universities have begun recruiting researchers who lost their jobs in the administration’s cost-cutting efforts, or are anxious over perceived threats to academic freedom.

Just hours after opening its new program for American researchers called Safe Place for Science in reaction to Trump administration policies, Aix Marseille University received its first application.

Since then, the university, which is in the south of France and is known for its science programs, has received about a dozen applications per day from what the school considers “scientific asylum” seekers.

Other universities in France and elsewhere in Europe have also rushed to save American researchers fleeing drastic cuts to jobs and programs by the Trump administration, as well as perceived attacks on whole fields of research.

At stake are not just individual jobs, but the concept of free scientific inquiry, university presidents say. They are also rushing to fill huge holes in collective research caused by the cuts, particularly in areas targeted by the Trump administration, including studies of climate change, public health, environmental science, gender and diversity.
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This had to happen. If scientists and other educators get the message that they won’t be able to work the way they want/need to in the USA, why shouldn’t European companies and universities head-hunt them?

I’m wondering if any of the scientifical types here (of whom we are fortunate to have many) have been approached/wooed by potential European employers? And if you were, would you consider relocating?

If I were younger and had the knowledge and skill set to make me attractive to an overseas company or college, given the way academic freedom seems to be on thin ice here, I’d seriously consider it.

2

Reminds me of how many Jewish scientists fled Germany and Europe in the 1930s-40s. Some of them contributed to the Allies’ war effort in significant ways.

I’m kind of hoping this is one part of history that doesn’t repeat itself.

3

Wow, you are so right. I didn’t even think of that. :worried:

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They also helped bolster of historically black universities and colleges because most other American schools wouldn’t hire Jewish refugees despite their qualifications and experience. This allowed HBCUs to expand their faculties and educate a generation of students.

Stranger

5

I’ve mentioned this before: my wife was born in Iran ten years before the Islamic revolution. Her father was a university dean and math professor. He read the writing on the wall and got the family out of the country a couple of months before the embassy hostage incident. Many of the colleagues he left behind were imprisoned or executed.

So, yeah, it’s a consistent truism everywhere. When a nation begins shackling and terrorizing its scientists and academics, and the brain trust heads for the exits, that nation is about to die.

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It’s interesting to think about China.

Exactly that apparently happened in Mao’s ‘cultural revolution’ where ‘intellectuals’ were sent out to be farmers to ‘reeducate them in proleterian values’. The ‘Great leap forward’ was a total fuckup.

The current Chinese leadership at least seem to understand that they need scientists and engineers…

7

I think this has been happening with climate scientist for a number of years now. You’re right, given the anti-science attitudes of so many Americans, and the government being actively hostile towards scientist, this had to happen. We’ll experience a brain drain and other nations will benefit from our loss.

Ditto. I would advise younger people to get out while they can even if they aren’t scientist.

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The problem with climate science in particular is that while there is great work being done in non-US research universities including a lot of field work, the bulk of really valuable information which informs global climate and hydrodynamical models is collected by mostly US-owned satellites and disseminated by federal agencies like NOAA, NASA, and USGS. With a concerted effort to shut those programs down and restrict access to the data (which is completely illegal; by federal law, most of the satellite data collected for climate surveillance purposes is required to be made openly available for public use) that limits the degree to which climate research can advance in many areas, even if those scientists are employed at European universities and research centers which aren’t suppressing that work. There is still a lot of valuable work that can be done from surface measurements, characterizing glacial and ice sheet melt, et cetera but the lost of US-based satellite data is a real blow to the climate science modeling community.

Stranger

9

I am a scientist, and a fairly well-known and well established one at that. There is NO WAY other countries can absorb the scientific ecosystem of the USA. Even just considering the very cream of the crop, there are too many scientists by at least an order of magnitude. Probably two orders.

Sure, some lucky ones will escape. But for the bulk of us, its stay and fight.

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I have a couple of friends who are medical and public health scientists at a major research university (with 20-25 years of professional post-PhD experience between them) and have basically lost all funding and federal support for their respective labs and epidemiology training program. They’ve been looking for positions abroad in both Canada and Europe, and have been essentially ‘wait-listed’. They’re each tenured at their school but without research funding and the need for epidemiologists trained in infectious disease research and investigation they’re unsure that they will even have enough students—not even international students that are sometimes self-funded—to run a lab or sustain a training program. They can stay and teach undergrads, or go begging to private foundations and ‘industry’, such as it in ID and public health, but the latter seems unlikely to provide much if any funding. And it isn’t as if working in disease research and public health is a highly lucrative field; I’m sure they both make decent money but not clearly not ‘Fuck you money’ permitting them to just quit and live off savings until retirement kicks in. So, they’re likely in the bucket of ‘stay and fight’ but it is hard to say what that even means; it isn’t as if there is a substantial segment of the non-scientist population that is going to protest for science funding (which most people seem to believe is worthless to them because it doesn’t directly make new iPhones), and especially public health that has become almost demonized in the eyes of many thanks to conservative backlash to facts from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the anti-vax craze.

It is insane what is being done to federal research funding, support for open dissemination of research information, and medical/public health/environmental scientists working at federal agencies for often a fraction of what they could make in corporate jobs because they literally want to serve and protect the public. And it is crazy that we appear to be ready to essentially abandon planetary and space science—not just because of the agenda to ostrich past anything that hints at climate science, but all publicly funded physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, geology, et cetera that is focused in space—which has been the cornerstone of American intellectual prowess for over sixty-five years, and for which the primary organizing agency is a synecdoche around the world for space exploration and science as a whole.

People came to the US to study and take their learning back to improve knowledge and research in their own countries, and while both Canada and Europe (and frankly, China) have some very fine research schools and post-secondary educational networks in many areas (some better than the US in particular fields), people came to the US because of the vast array of mostly publicly funded research opportunities, which is now being thrown away like a used tissue by an imbecilic, bellicose conman, his swindler pseudo-wealthy fascist-saluting first mate, their bought-and-paid-for Thiel sock puppet, and their crazy friend who will put literally anything into his body as long as it isn’t a vaccine and thinks that it is good for children to get ‘Jesus Freckles’. What the fuck?

As an aside, Friday night I saw people on overpasses in the Pasadena area displaying “Trump 2024!”, “Elon!”, “DOGE!”, “NO VAX!” (and a very tiny ”Vance.”) posters, as if they are protesting(?), campaigning(?), bragging(?) about something. All I can think is “What the fuck are you proud of?” What kind of delusional asshole still thinks that re-electing a twice-impeached, convicted felon and confidence man who narrowly avoided being convicted of starting an insurrection and who has vowed vengeance upon large swaths of the American people was a good move even if you endorse certain notions that he ostensibly (if irregularly) supports?

Stranger

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Yep. We’re facked.

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Those would be the voters who are hate-filled, morons or both and who voted for him in the first place. They may maybe possibly see the truth when the leopard eats their personal faces. They will definitely not see it before them. Musk is NOT eliminating necessary or useful programs. He is eliminating fraud and waste! Any other opinion is Fake News made up by Libtards!

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I know someone in physics – not space science physics – who is seriously talking about accepting a position outside the US because of Trump’s shenanigans. I hadn’t realized how this was impacting general physics, as well.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/28/trump-administration-science-research-cuts/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzQzMzA3MjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzQ0Njg5NTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NDMzMDcyMDAsImp0aSI6IjY4Mzc0YzI3LTNlODQtNDBjYi1iMjczLTE5ZGJlZWUyY2UxYiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9wb2xpdGljcy8yMDI1LzAzLzI4L3RydW1wLWFkbWluaXN0cmF0aW9uLXNjaWVuY2UtcmVzZWFyY2gtY3V0cy8ifQ.9QHymDgKQcsXvMIeEQitHFmS0PmjJEscrGSFrCXfGiA

Stranger

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And this from members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

A climate of fear has descended on the research community. Researchers, afraid of losing their funding or job security, are removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as “climate change”) that agencies are flagging as objectionable. Although some in the scientific community have protested vocally, most researchers, universities, research institutions, and professional organizations have kept silent to avoid antagonizing the administration and jeopardizing their funding.

If our country’s research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge. Other countries will lead the development of novel disease treatments, clean energy sources, and the new technologies of the future. Their populations will be healthier, and their economies will surpass us in business, defense, intelligence gathering, and monitoring our planet’s health. The damage to our nation’s scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse.

Public Statement on Supporting Science for the Benefit of All Citizens

Stranger

16

Stating the obvious here, but a lot of what fuels those corporations in medical and many other industries is the ability to license discoveries from government-funded research at universities. That pipeline is going to run dry, with major consequences for future innovations in the products those corporations can bring to market. Yes, many corporations, like pharma, also conduct their own (often product-specific) research but they can’t afford the huge outlay to support the wide range of research into basic science that produces the tremendous amount of new knowledge coming from universities.

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Science: “Germany to create ‘super–high-tech ministry’ for research, technology, and aerospace”

In a section titled “scientific freedom,” the document seems to refer at least obliquely to developments in the United States, where scientists working on topics such as gender, global health, and climate change have seen their funding slashed and important data sets have been scrubbed from the websites of federal agencies. “Funding decisions will be based on science-driven criteria,” the document states. “It seems like that should be a no-brainer, but we have seen how quickly it can change,” says Eva Winkler, an oncologist and medical ethicist at Heidelberg University and a member of the German Ethics Council. The parties also state they “want to safeguard scientifically relevant data sets whose existence is threatened and keep them accessible worldwide.”

Germany could benefit from the political upheaval in the U.S. and elsewhere, the document suggests. The government plans to launch a program called 1000 Minds, to attract international talent and “maintain Germany as an attractive destination” during an era of polarization. The parties have not provided details, but Winkler says she hopes the program will “make it easier to recruit the best international people.” Current practices can make international hires especially complicated, she says.

Stranger

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Well. I just got my first potential international recruitment overture. And from a country where I actually speak the language.

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Sounds like an opportunity worth exploring at the very least. I hate to say “Get out while you still can,” but the way things are going…

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Nearly 300 scientists apply for French academic program amid Trump cuts in U.S.

Amid Trump cuts, nearly 300 U.S.-based scientists seek French program : NPR

A French university courting U.S.-based academics said it has already received nearly 300 applications for researchers seeking “refugee status” amid President Trump’s elimination of funding for several scientific programs.

Last month, Aix-Marseille University, one of the country’s oldest and largest universities, announced it was accepting applications for its Safe Place For Science program, which it said offers “a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue their research in complete freedom.”

This week, Aix-Marseille said it had received 298 applications, and 242 of them are eligible and currently up for review. Of the eligible applicants, 135 are American, 45 have a dual nationality, 17 are French and 45 are from other countries, the university said.
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My bold.

If I had any scientifical knowledge/skills to peddle, I’d certainly give this some serious thought. And if I were 20-30 years younger. The research and academic climate here is surely going to get worse. And who knows how long, if every, until it returns to normal.