Programmes to recruit researchers from the US, including chemists, are proliferating in Europe and elsewhere. This comes following Donald Trump’s return to the White House and many scientists working for the US government losing their jobs amid moves to increase efficiencies and cut science agency budgets, as well as unprecedented attacks on universities that have included defunding certain grants.
A dozen European nations have outlined schemes they are developing to attract researchers who want to leave the US and other countries, in a recent letter to the EU commissioner for research and innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva.
‘In order to seize this historic moment, the European Union needs to show an act of solidarity and an attractivity boom to welcome brilliant talents from abroad who might suffer from research interference and ill-motivated and brutal funding cuts,’ reads the letter, signed by research, science and education ministers, as well as other officials from France, Romania, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Spain, Slovenia, Lithuania, Germany and Bulgaria.
We are witnessing a new brain drain
Éric Berton, Aix Marseille University
To achieve this ambition, they argue that dedicated financing ‘must urgently be secured’ through existing funding mechanisms like the European Research Council, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) – the EU’s flagship doctoral and postdoctoral training fund – and the European Research Area career and job opportunities portal, together with a dedicated immigration framework.
The European officials suggest organising a high-level conference of member states’ science ministers and European Commissioners in the coming weeks.
Earlier this month, Aix Marseille University in France launched its own initiative to attract US researchers who perceive their work to be threatened or hindered by the Trump administration. A week after the launch, dubbed Safe Place for Science, more than 40 US scientists had responded, according to Aix Marseille.
A new brain drain
These respondents included researchers from Stanford and Yale, the George Washington University, the National Institutes of Health, Nasa and 15 other prestigious institutions who work in fields like health, immunology, as well as the environment – in areas such climate change, natural disaster management and greenhouse gases – who ‘are now considering scientific exile’, Aix Marseille indicated. ‘We are witnessing a new brain drain,’ said the university’s president, Éric Berton. ‘We will do everything in our power to help as many scientists as possible continue their research.’
The university plans to allocate up to €15 million (£12.5 million) for the three-year programme and work with local institutions to host approximately 15 scientists from the US.
The French engineering school CentraleSupélec has also set up a €3 million endowment fund to host researchers from US universities and support ‘research work and projects that can no longer be carried out in the United States’. The university said the programme ‘aims to provide an environment in which high-level scientists can conduct their research freely and safely’.
An article published in the Le Monde, written by a group of researchers working in French labs, described the news from colleagues in the US as ‘terrifying’. ‘Our duty in Europe is to react collectively and propose simplified reception solutions for our colleagues while this administration remains in place in the United States,’ they wrote. ‘Given the violence and speed with which Donald Trump and Elon Musk are acting, these solutions must provide good working conditions within a few weeks, or even days.’
Meanwhile, the Netherlands is also seeking to become a top destination for scientific talent from across the world, especially the US. The country’s education minister, Eppo Bruins, announced on 20 March that a new fund is being created to lure ‘international top scientific talent’.
‘Several European countries are responding to this and are attracting international scientific talent. I want the Netherlands to continue to be at the forefront,’ Bruins wrote in a letter to the country’s House of Representatives. ‘It is essential for the competitiveness, strategic autonomy and resilience of Europe and the Netherlands that we continue to attract top-level scientists.’
Can Europe afford them?
But there has been some pushback. Critics, including the Dutch General Education Union (AOb), argue that it might not be practical considering ongoing research cuts in the country. ‘The minister is being magnanimous, but the irony is of course that it has to be paid from the existing research budget,’ stated AOb director Douwe van der Zweep. ‘The same budget that this cabinet is cutting millions from, cuts that we have been protesting against for months.’ European countries have recently begun a new wave of cuts to research budgets.
Elsewhere, the Free University of Brussels in Belgium has opened 12 postdoctoral positions for international academics, ‘with a specific focus on American scholars working in socially significant fields’, that come with €2.5 million as part of the European MSCA programme. The university said this new initiative is ‘a response to the alarming political interference in academic research by the Trump administration’. As part of its Brains for Brussels initiative, the university also aims to attract US professors looking to relocate.
Beyond researchers who are US citizens, scientists from other nations who work in the US might also be lured away. ‘Even those students from other countries that are here in the US already studying may be more inclined to leave,’ cautions Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ‘Those very individuals that we want to keep here in the US may consider that their prospects are better elsewhere.’
Robert Quinn, founding executive director of the Scholars at Risk (Sar) Network based in the US, welcomes these actions by European higher education institutions. ‘For the relatively small number of academics in particularly targeted disciplines, who may have difficulty continuing their work under this administration, the idea of invitations to work in Europe or elsewhere temporarily may be of interest,’ Quinn states. But he notes that these scientists are not refugees and it shouldn’t be implied that the conditions they face in the US are similar to the violence, imprisonment and targeted persecution regularly experienced by scholars around the world.
‘There are early signs of efforts to recruit quality academics, researchers, scientists and projects/labs for the purpose of increasing the competitive position of the institution receiving them for the long term,’ Quinn confirms. He is not surprised and does not blame these European institutions.
These initiatives are not tantamount to ‘poaching’ or a ‘brain drain’, because those terms suggest improper action on the part of the inviting institution, according to Quinn. Instead, he puts the onus on the policies of the Trump administration, describing them as ‘a self-inflicted wound’.
‘Arbitrary and malicious financial restrictions, interference in research and teaching content, interference in university operations and policies, and general disparagement of education, knowledge and truth-seeking will inevitably drive talented, creative and innovative people of integrity to find more stable, supportive environments elsewhere,’ Quinn warns. ‘The administration’s policies are the cause of any resulting harm to the US, not the fact that European universities are smart enough to make the best of a bad situation.’
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