The Europeans offer safe haven for science:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign against American higher education as she unveiled a half-billion-euro plan to attract foreign researchers.
“The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.”
Appearing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at Paris’ storied Sorbonne University on Monday, von der Leyen said the “Choose Europe for Science” initiative would put forward a €500 million program from 2025 to 2027 to attract foreign researchers to “help support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world.”
Macron said the country would commit another €100 million from the France 2030 program to woo researchers and make Europe a “safe haven” for science.
“There can be no lasting democracy without free and open science,” he said.
Several speakers at the event hit out at Trump’s efforts to gut federal research funding and threats to cut funding to universities like Harvard to the tune of billions of dollars over conservative criticisms of higher education and allegations of antisemitism on campuses. Both French Minister of Higher Education Philippe Baptiste and Robert Proctor, a prominent professor of the history of science at Stanford, called what’s happening across the Atlantic a “reverse enlightenment.”
This is very sad for America. But Europe is nice and if I were a scientist I would take them up on the offer in a heartbeat. What we are doing to scientific research is criminal. It’s clear that we are entering into an American dark age, a sort of Maoist cultural revolution. Scientists, intellectuals, academics and the like are no longer welcome here. Read what the Treasury Secretary wrote in his WSJ op-ed today if you don’t believe me:
Keep telling Americans they have to sacrifice, billionaires. And tell them you’re looking out for their “spiritual” well-being. They’re gonna love it.