- Taken for granted - 22nd April 2025
- In through the out door - 22nd April 2025
- More poll dancing - 17th April 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, changes in official policy have always been central, and now this is underlined by news that actions by the Trump administration could be driving top scientists abroad, and Welsh universities may benefit.
It’s an ill wind etc…
The notorious flip-flopping and general behaviour of Donald Trump (it looks as though he has been played by Vladimir Putin, and don’t forget he said he could end the Ukraine war “in a day”), may actually have a positive effect.
It appears that this might be causing (or about to cause) a brain drain OUT of the United States of America (USA) and INTO Europe, with Wales a possible beneficiary.
This ‘brain drain’ has always been seen in reverse, with people going INTO the USA, sometimes fleeing Nazi persecution (think of Albert Einstein), but now the opposite could be happening, as Mr Trump’s appalling nativism, and attacks on the research grant system, take hold.
The Trump administration is cutting funding, and targeting researchers such as climate scientists for political reasons, with other systems also at risk because they are seen as too ‘woke’.
For example Columbia University (CU) recently agreed to change disciplinary policies and the political orientation of teaching in some departments after the US Government threatened to cut $400 million in federal grants.
President Trump has frozen $2.2 billion (£1.7 billion) of federal funding to Harvard, and also threatened the university’s tax-exempt status.
But officials at Harvard have hit back, and only yesterday filed a federal lawsuit.
With this as a background, in a letter to the European Commission (EC) on March 20, 13 science ministers of European Union (EU) countries called for “immediate action” to make Europe more attractive to “brilliant talents from abroad who might suffer from research interference and ill-motivated and brutal funding cuts”.
Universities and research funders are also looking into short-term opportunities, and the European Research Council (ERC) grants for senior scientists will be beefed up, says an official.
Germany’s Max Planck Society (MPS) says it has been contacted by top scientists in America interested in moving, and is examining its options.
Karolinska Institutet (KI), a medical university in Stockholm, has set up a task force.
Aix-Marseille University (AMU) launched an initiative last month to attract 15 US-based researchers, and has had numerous applications.
“The core of our programme is indignation and shock at witnessing the policies of the Trump administration”, says Eric Berton, the university’s president.
Wales too could be an attractive option for those escaping Mr Trump because it has the same language (the English one!), and a world-renowned Higher Education sector.
Grants that are available for people to study abroad, could even be tweaked for students who want to come IN.
So every cloud has a silver lining (I suppose this is not really a mixed metaphor, because a wind, even an ill one, will blow a cloud!) as they say.
But sometimes it is hard to see.
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when it was sometimes difficult to see the positives in a story) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Also on The Eye – how new research that seems to show that Ukrainians are staying in Wales and across the UK after giving up on the idea of returning home, could have a major beneficial effect on the economy as well as society as a whole.
