When Emma saw a posting for a faculty position in the University of Mississippi’s School of Pharmacy late last year, she thought she’d found her dream job. The early-career chemist, who asked not to use her real name so as not to jeopardize her current role, had already moved from Europe to the United States and was committed to staying.
But by the time she’d cleared the application process and was negotiating for equipment and personnel, she started to have major reservations. “Every day I would see news articles on federal workers who were let go, funds being withheld unless [diversity, equity, and inclusion] initiatives were shut down, and speculation on whether the Department of Education was going to be abolished,” she says. She worried about a lack of future funding, and about ricocheting effects on universities, students, and staff. Last month, “I decided to withdraw my candidacy … despite being offered everything I needed,” she says.
Emma now plans to move back to Europe. She’s not alone: Universities around the world have reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers, who face an increasingly uncertain climate under President Donald Trump’s administration. And some countries and their institutions are already looking to use the opportunity to attract new talent and reverse the steady migration of scientists to the U.S. in recent decades.
France has been among the fastest off the blocks. Aix Marseilles University launched an initiative earlier this month called a Safe Place for Science, which will invest between €10 million and €15 million to support about 15 researchers. The offer has so far attracted more than 50 applicants, says a university spokesperson, and the institution “has already welcomed one researcher” for a visit. Another French university, Paris-Saclay, tells Science it might extend or launch new initiatives to support U.S. researchers. And France’s research minister recently sent a letter to French universities seeking “concrete proposals” on how to lure researchers from the U.S., according to Agence France-Presse.
Offers in some other countries have been more direct. After the Trump administration threatened to terminate $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University, Yi Rao, a neurobiologist at Peking University, former president of Capital Medical University, and prominent Trump critic, contacted researchers at the institution to offer his help. “I was shocked to learn of the vast cancellation of grants and contracts,” he wrote in an email seen by Science, adding that “if any good scientist … wants to have a stable position for conducting scientific research, please do not hesitate to contact me.”
Many major institutions told Science they have no plans to actively recruit U.S. researchers, or didn’t reply to questions. But even universities that aren’t targeting recruitment could feel the effects of a wave of researchers looking to leave the country. The University of Barcelona, for example, has observed a spike in applications from the U.S. this year, largely from European researchers considering returning to the region, a university spokesperson told Science.
At the University of Lausanne, oncologist Johanna Joyce, president-elect of the European Association for Cancer Research, says unsolicited applications to her lab from U.S.-based scientists have risen fivefold since January. It’s clear, she says, that “the future for so many scientists in the U.S. and around the world has rapidly become very uncertain.”
Some policy experts say national governments should be doing more to attract overseas talent. Danielle Cave, director of executive, strategy, and research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has pushed for Australia to offer fast-track visas or permits to top U.S. scientists, an idea that has also been under discussion in Norway and other countries in recent weeks. Not capitalizing on the situation “would be wasting a unique opportunity,” she says. (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s agency for research, told Science it had no plans in the works to woo U.S.-based investigators.)
Researchers wanting to leave the U.S., however, could face a sobering reality once they try to nail down roles abroad, where many universities are struggling with funding problems. In Canada, where there have been loud calls for research institutions to take up U.S. emigres, higher education is facing debilitating cuts, notes Richard Gold, director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at McGill University. McGill recently announced it would slash CA$45 million and more than 250 jobs to address a funding deficit, while other institutions such as Queen’s University and York University have also cut programs or suspended some admissions. In the United Kingdom, many universities are already cutting jobs and nearly three-quarters could be operating in deficit by 2026, according to a recent report from the country’s higher education regulator. Science and higher education budgets also face cuts in the Netherlands and other European countries.
For now, the situation for U.S. academics remains rife with uncertainty, with some Trump administration actions blocked by judges or fully or partially reversed within days. And the full effects of Trump’s policies are unlikely to be seen immediately, Gold notes, because university admissions and faculty transfers tend to ramp up late in the year. But if large numbers of academics working in the U.S. do decide to leave, Gold doubts other countries will be able to absorb them all. The end result, he warns, could be an exodus of talent from global science. “My biggest fear,” he says, is that “we’re going to lose a cohort of researchers.”
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/overseas-universities-see-opportunity-u-s-brain-drain
