The European Union and France on Monday announced half a billion euros worth of incentives to lure scientists to the continent, seeking to profit from US President Trump’s federal funding cuts and clashes with top US universities.
“We call on researchers worldwide to unite and join us … If you love freedom, come and help us stay free,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at Paris’ Sorbonne University alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The money would fund research projects and help universities cover the cost of bringing foreign scientists over to help run them, officials said. Von der Leyen announced the 500 mn euros ($566.6 mn) incentive package and said she also wanted EU member states to invest 3% of GDP in research and development by 2030. Macron pledged 100 million from France, though it was not yet clear if this came on top of the EU pledge.
Trump has targeted US universities since taking office in Jan by freezing federal funding, launching investigations, revoking international students’ visas and making other demands. Last week, he said his administration will revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, a move that Harvard said would be an unlawful misuse of the US tax code.
Robert N Proctor, a historian at Stanford University, said Trump was leading “a libertarian right-wing assault on the scientific enterprise” that had been years in the making. “We could well see a reverse brain drain,” he said. “It’s not just to Europe, but scholars are moving to Canada and Asia as well.”
Meredith Whittaker, president of encrypted messaging app Signal, declined to comment on geopolitical disputes, but added it was inevitable top talent would gravitate to welcoming jurisdictions.
“I think researchers, people whose lives, whose inquiry, whose obsessions are motivated by particular questions, particular fields, who exist in a community of intellectual practice, will always be attracted to places where the ground is fertile for that work, where they’re not threatened, and where their research isn’t hampered or perverted.”
This is a Reuters’ story