European universities offer ‘scientific asylum’ to US researchers fleeing Trump’s cuts

Laced with terms such as “censorship” and “political interference”, the Belgium-based jobs advert was far from typical. The promise of academic freedom, however, hinted at who it was aimed at: researchers in the US looking to flee the funding freezes, cuts and ideological impositions ushered in by Donald Trump’s administration.

“We see it as our duty to come to the aid of our American colleagues,” said Jan Danckaert, the rector of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in explaining why his university – founded in 1834 to safeguard academia from the interference of church or state – had decided to open 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a particular focus on Americans.

“American universities and their researchers are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference,” Danckaert said in a statement. “They’re seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.”

The university is among a handful of institutions across Europe that have begun actively recruiting US researchers, offering themselves as a haven for those keen to escape the Trump administration’s crackdown on research and academia.

Since Trump took power in late January, researchers in the US have faced a multipronged attack. Efforts to slash government spending have left thousands of employees bracing for layoffs, including at institutions such as Nasa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency. The government’s targeting of “wokeism” has meanwhile sought to root out funding for research deemed to involve diversity, certain kinds of vaccines and any mention of the climate crisis.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has opened 12 postdoctoral positions with a view to attracting researchers from the US. Photograph: James Arthur Gekiere/Belga Mag/AFP/Getty Images

In France, the director of the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris, Yasmine Belkaid, said it was already working to recruit people from across the Atlantic for work in fields such as infectious diseases or the origins of disease.

“I receive daily requests from people who want to return: French, European or even Americans who no longer feel able to do their research or are afraid to do it freely,” Belkaid told the French newspaper La Tribune. “You might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity, all the same.”

The sentiment was echoed by France’s minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, in a recent letter that called on research institutions to send in proposals on how best to attract talent from the US. “Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the US,” he said. “Naturally, we wish to welcome a certain number of them.”

On Thursday, the Netherlands said it was aiming to swiftly launch a fund to attract researchers to the country.

While the fund would be open to people of all nationalities, the country’s education minister, Eppo Bruins, hinted at the tensions that have gripped US academia in announcing the plans.

“There is currently a great global demand for international top scientific talent. At the same time, the geopolitical climate is changing, which is increasing the international mobility of scientists,” Bruins said in a letter to parliament.

“Several European countries are responding to this with efforts to attract international talent,” he added. “I want the Netherlands to remain at the vanguard of these efforts.”

The Dutch effort comes after France’s Aix-Marseille University said it had set up a programme – titled Safe Place for Science – that would put aside funding for more than two dozen researchers from the US for three years.

“We wish we didn’t have to do this,” said Éric Berton, the university’s president. “We’re not looking to attract researchers. But we were quite indignant about what was happening and we felt that our colleagues in the US were going through a catastrophe … we wanted to offer some sort of scientific asylum to those whose research is being hindered.”

Two weeks after the programme was launched there have been about 100 applications, with researchers from Yale, Nasa and Stanford among those who have expressed interest. The university continues to receive about 10 applications a day, said Berton, many of them from researchers involved in studying climate, health or social sciences.

Berton said he hoped universities across Europe would join his in providing a safe space for researchers. “I think that we need to realise the historic moment we’re living through and the serious, long-term consequences this could have,” he said. “Europe must rise to the occasion.”

At VUB, the opening of the 12 postdoctoral positions was also aimed at acknowledging the global impact of Trump’s crackdown. Two research projects in which the university was involved – one delving into youth and disinformation and another investigating the transatlantic dialogue between the US and Europe – had been cancelled due to “changed policy priorities”, it said.

For the university in Brussels, the openings were also a vindication of sorts. In a 2016 interview with Fox News, Trump had sought to characterise life in Brussels as akin to “living in a hellhole”, falsely accusing migrants in the city of failing to assimilate.

“At the time, the statement elicited many emotional reactions in Europe,” the university said. “This gives additional symbolic meaning to the VUB initiative.”