Letter to the editor: Trump's brain drain

Brunswick Beacon, 05.29.25

The United States has historically attracted the world’s finest minds fleeing totalitarian regimes and seeking a free and supportive environment in which to work. Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe, all fled Europe for America and helped us beat Nazi Germany in the race to develop atomic weapons.

After World War II, the British Royal Society coined the term “brain drain” to describe the flight of scientists and engineers from the old world to America. Whether because he likes to see adversaries kissing his behind or through sheer stupidity, Trump is single-handedly reversing the direction of brain drain.

Trump proposes cutting $21 billion from the National Institutes of Health, almost halving the budget of the world’s largest funder of medical research. He has withheld billions from universities and pledged to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard, by far the world leader in Nobel prize winners.

The rest of the world is opening its arms wide to scientists and researchers fleeing Trump.  French President Emmanuel Macron expressed astonishment at Trump’s anti-science/anti-research policies:

"Nobody could have imagined, a few years ago, that one of the largest democracies in the world would abolish research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in that program," Macron said.

"Nobody could think that this very great democracy in the world, whose economic model is based so strongly on free science and innovation (...) was going to make such a mistake. But here we are.”

Sir John Bell, head of Britain’s Ellison Institute of Technology, says there will soon be a flood of scientific refugees: “I’ve got the best guys in the best universities in America all saying, ‘When can we move?’” Of 690 postgraduate researchers polled by the publication Nature, 548 said they were considering leaving the U.S.

Trump’s war on universities is destroying America’s support for higher education and pure scientific research that really did make America great.

Nancy Briganti

Carolina Shores