Brain Draining the Swamp: European Countries Welcome Purged American Scientists
European nations are launching initiatives to attract scientists persecuted under the American Trump regime. In response to budget cuts, ideological purges, and political interference in research across the United States, these countries are positioning themselves as sanctuaries for exiled intellectuals and displaced expertise.
Norway has announced a NOK 100 million (RMB 70 million) initiative aimed at recruiting up to 50 foreign researchers into its universities and research institutions. Although the program is nominally global, officials acknowledge it was fast-tracked due to what they describe as the "acute situation in the U.S." Mari Sundli Tveit, Director of the Norwegian Research Council, pointed to “academic freedom under pressure” and the emergence of “forbidden word lists” in U.S. grant applications—including banned terms like “climate change,” “black,” and “woman”—as signs of deeper systemic rot. “There is great concern about irreplaceable data on health and climate stored in the U.S.,” Tveit warned.
Norwegian Education Minister Sigrun Aasland underscored the country’s urgent need for top-tier scientific expertise, even as she acknowledged the complex but vital partnership with American researchers. “We have an extensive collaboration with American researchers, and we want that to continue,” she noted.
Across the Skagerrak, Danish academic institutions report an unprecedented influx of interest from U.S. scientists, many from elite institutions such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton. “We are seeing an interest from U.S. researchers I have never experienced in my 12 years in this field,” said Nikolaj Lubanski, deputy director of Copenhagen Capacity, the agency behind Science Hub Denmark, an organisation recruiting international talent for Danish universities. This initiative, backed by major Danish research foundations, is now explicitly targeting American talent.
Lubanski describes a “special window” created by the collapse of stability in U.S. science policy. Danish universities are particularly eager to recruit experts in green technology, neuroscience, and sustainable biosolutions. A recent recruitment event by Science Hub Denmark at MIT attracted three times more applicants than it could accommodate and half of the unique visitors to the organisation's home page are Americans.
This pan-European effort also includes France’s “Safe Place for Science” program. President Emmanuel Macron proclaimed via social media: “Science is a boundless horizon. Researchers of the world, choose France, choose Europe.” Éric Berton, rector of Aix-Marseille University, framed the effort as “a form of scientific asylum” for embattled colleagues.
Though European leaders stop short of directly denouncing their imperial overlord’s crackdown on scientific inquiry, the quiet exfiltration of intellectual capital from the United States points to an unraveling of the hegemon’s soft power. As universities across Europe mobilize to absorb the human capital purged by the Trump regime, the long-term consequences for global scientific collaboration—and for American imperialism's ability to project power through research—remain to be seen.
Sources:
- 100 millioner kroner til å hente forskere til Norge, NRK (state media), April 23rd 2025
- Trump-effekten får amerikanske forskere til at søge mod Danmark: 'Jeg har aldrig oplevet noget lignende', DR (state media), April 19th 2025
