A university in France says nearly 300 American researchers have applied for a space in its “Safe Place for Science” program that was created to lure U.S. researchers seeking “scientific asylum” amid aggressive academic spending cuts and other actions against colleges by the Trump administration.
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Brian Sandberg, who has taught history at a major U.S. state university for almost two decades, is one of those who’ve sought to take advantage of the program launched in March by Aix-Marseille University.
He told CBS News the U.S. risks losing its status as the most attractive global hub of academic research. He expects the White House’s actions to lead to a “brain drain,” as many of his academic colleagues in a range of subjects look to depart for similar programs abroad due to the White House’s policies.
“The entire American system of research universities and of research in general are under attack in so many different ways,” Sandberg told CBS News. “I don’t have any inside knowledge of the Trump administration’s motives, but clearly from their statements and from their actions, there’s an attempt to control research and to control knowledge.”
“Researchers in all domains of academic research are having their funds frozen by the federal government. In some cases, existing grants were rescinded,” he said.
“The new grant processes are all being politicized with certain keywords used to essentially censure which subjects are worthy of research and which aren’t,” Sandberg said. “So I’ve seen a lot of researchers talking about looking for a plan B.”
They will find plenty of options.
A number of major international universities have launched academic programs in an effort to poach researchers away from the U.S. as the Trump administration has, in recent months, frozen funding, made cuts and issued executive orders targeting individual colleges across America.
Aix Marseilles says it will commit nearly $18 million in funding for 15 U.S. researchers to study in fields ranging from health, environment and climate change, to the social sciences and astrophysics.
Schools from Europe, Canada and China have all made moves in recent months to lure academics away from U.S. universities as the White House continues with moves it says will eliminate bureaucratic waste and fraud, as well as cutting programs that the administration says are promoting “radical DEI and climate change alarmism.”
Aix Marseille said in April that it had created the Safe Place for Science program to attract academics, “in a context where some scientists in the United States may feel threatened or hindered in their research.”
The university later said it had received applications from researchers at Stanford, Yale, NASA, NIH, George Washington University, and more than a dozen other “prestigious institutions” who were “now considering scientific exile.”
“The United States is an international powerhouse of scientific research and academic research and knowledge production for the entire world. But that is precisely what is under assault now,” Sandberg said.
