A US brain drain will have global implications, and also undermine America

The Trump administration's broad attacks on science are increasing the likelihood of a brain drain similar to that seen in Russia and other authoritarian regime

By Lara Williams and Mark Gongloff

 

Just before Albert Einstein departed for America from Britain, where he’d sought refuge from Nazi persecution, he attended a meeting intended to raise funds for academic refugees from Germany. There, he stated that without the intellectual and individual freedoms fought for by his European ancestors, “there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister.” 

 

Almost a century later, it seems that the US may have forgotten this vital truth. There’s a growing chance that the Trump administration’s indiscriminate attacks on science will prompt the kind of brain drain that’s affected Russia and other places in the grips of authoritarian regimes. Such an exodus would have global implications and undermine one of America’s great strengths. 

 

 

The US government’s aggression has targeted disciplines ranging from climate studies to biomedical research. Thousands of experts have been fired from government agencies and cash-starved universities; research proposals with language that an AI algorithm or an Elon Musk associate working for the Department of Government Efficiency might mistake for “woke,” including those featuring words such such as “water quality” and “women,” are being rejected. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is rounding up researchers with green cards or visas on the flimsiest pretenses.

 

“The biggest factor here is simply the raw uncertainty of it all,” says Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “If you’re a  natural scientist with massive labs and post-docs and pre-docs and research assistants, and all your funding depends on one government agency that may be in the crosshairs of DOGE, that uncertainty is even larger.”

 

In this environment, even many scientists who haven’t yet lost their jobs or funding have one eye on the border. In a recent survey of more than 1,600 scientists by Nature, 75% said they were considering leaving the country.  

 

Parts of Europe are already stepping up to take in those affected by the assault. Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), a research university in Belgium, has established a dedicated contact point for American researchers looking to continue their work abroad, and it’s opening 12 postdoctoral positions for international scholars; Aix-Marseilles University (AMU) has launched a €15 million ($20 million) Safe Place for Science program, which will support 15 American scientists. Eric Berton, president of AMU, said that by the March 31 deadline he’d had received about 300 applications — and more have come in since. 

 

Similar programs are being replicated across the continent, and the European Commission has increased the financial support offered by the European Research Council, a public body that funds scientific enquiry within the bloc, for relocating scholars. It’s also working on other ways to enhance the bloc’s attractiveness such as special visas for top talent and a system to help governments and universities pool resources to support incoming scientists.

 

Berton is concerned, though, that support doesn’t yet match the scale of the problem, with universities waiting on decisions and funding from the Commission or their respective national authorities. The AMU is using money from its own coffers to fund its program because he views the situation as an emergency.

 

International mobility is fairly normal among researchers, especially early in their careers, and is typically viewed as a positive for science by helping to foster innovation and scientific discovery. But both VUB and AMU are seeing an unusually high number of senior scientists reaching out about opportunities. These late-career scholars are typically less mobile – for personal and professional reasons – so it’s notable that they, too, are considering quitting the US. Moreover, it’s not just potential departees; Mette Morsing, director of Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, says there’s also been an uptick scientists who would have sought visas to attend prestigious American universities and research institutions instead turning to Europe.

 

A scientific exodus would leave scars that will last for decades; Einstein, for example, never returned to Europe. If the US’s best brains depart in droves, there’ll be fewer scientists at all experience levels to develop future generations — fewer tenured professors to train Ph.Ds, fewer Ph.Ds to train post-grads, fewer post-grads to train grad students, and so on down the pipeline.

 

We’ve seen this movie before; following lower-intensity attacks on climate science during the presidency of George W. Bush and Donald Trump’s first term, many young scientists chose other fields, according to Kevin Trenberth, who worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research for 36 years and has been a lead author of several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

 

“You can see already that, instead of a steady flow of people into the field, there’s a hole,” Trenberth said in a phone call from his home nation of New Zealand, to which he returned in 2020 — with no plans to return to the US.  “As people like myself are retiring, you would expect to see new people stepping up and taking over leadership positions, and those people aren’t there. And now it’s going to be a lot worse.”

 

Even before this brain drain has begun, the Trump administration has already done lasting damage to a scientific capacity built up over decades and with mountains of tax dollars. Those investments were repaid many times over in a healthy population, world-leading technological innovation and a booming economy. Without that capacity, the US will fall behind the rest of the world in all of those areas, noted a recent open letter signed by nearly 2,000 scientists.

 

AMU’s Berton is emphatic about his motivation. While European institutions stand to benefit from an influx of fresh talent, he’s focused on the broader view and a need to defend long-standing values of academic freedom and international collaboration. Universities should be nonpartisan institutions that gather evidence, generate data and further our collective knowledge. Supporting US scientists is necessary to cushion the blow to science, rather than an opportunity to poach the brightest and best.

 

Science also benefits from diverse voices and experience. The biodiversity and climate crises, for example. look different depending on where in the world you are — centering research in just one region or omitting an entire nation’s observations will have profound impacts on how we understand the world. 

 

Worse — as much as it pains middle-aged scientists and columnists to admit — many of the best scientific innovations come from younger generations. Their brains haven’t yet been tainted by age or cynicism, and they’re motivated by a need for jobs, money and recognition to make their mark. Diamonds are formed in such conditions.

 

“Every 10 years we have jumps forward, because we have pressure on people who have the capacity to respond to it,” said Daniel Sandweiss, a professor of anthropology and climate at the University of Maine. “My grad students are better trained and smarter than I am. That’s where the hope is.”

 

By terrorizing a generation of young scientists, Trump is extinguishing that hope. Without academic freedom, we run the risk of missing out on the next generation of Edisons, Feynmans, Sagans, Rubins and Doudnas. That wouldn’t just hurt America — it’d be a loss for the whole world.  (Disclaimer: This is a Bloomberg Opinion piece, and these are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper)