The first American 'scientific refugees' arrive in France

Researchers are underpaid and research is underfunded everywhere. Like most jobs that people find inherently interesting.

I don't know about the specific situation in France. In general, Europe spends more on academic research than the US, both in absolute terms and as a fraction of GDP. However, it's easier to make an academic career in the US. Because the gap between academic and industry salaries is wider in the US, Americans are more likely to leave the academia after PhD. And because employment-based immigration is particularly difficult in the US, many would-be immigrants end up doing a PhD without any intention of staying in the academia. Which means you have less competition if you stay in the academia in the US.

This is addressed in TFA:

> [...] the fact there's less money for research.

> An early-career biological anthropologist said she was still awaiting contract details from AMU before putting pen to paper because of salary discrepancies, though she took comfort in the fact that the cost of living is lower in France — especially considering that education for her two children, who she said were eager to settle in Marseille, would be free.

> The university’s president insisted that participants in the “Safe Place for Science” program would be paid the same wages as French researchers. The statement sought to appease concerns within France’s academic community that money would now be focused on drawing U.S. scientists whereas local researchers have long complained of insufficient funding.

> But the biological anthropologist said a more carefree life could compensate for a lower salary. "There’ll be a lot less stress as a whole, politically, academically," she reflected.

At least it beats being attacked by your government daily for having the audacity to become a scientist. Especially if you publish science that isn’t politically convenient.

you get to live in France, have free health care and school for your kids (and I bet these underpaid researchers in france actually get completely unheard of in the US things like modest pensions). How much do you actually need to be paid? Most Americans would materially benefit from such an exchange

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You think it’s a bad thing that French researchers will have direct access to the “top researchers”???

Sounds like a major benefit to French researchers

And the ascending French political right will paint this as a continuance of decades of French policy prioritizing immigrants over French people.

So when they eventually have the political reigns, this policy will end and these researchers will have to start over somewhere else.

Isn’t this the same argument that America should kick out non American students and would be researchers from American universities? Either way it’s protectionist. Basically what Trump supports but in France.

> Clearly professors or scholars in Women's studies / gender studies, critical race theory, and climate science are the ones worst hit by the current leadership in the US.

Source?? Here's the thing, as far as I know, women's studies/gender studies, crt, whatever... they're cheap, mostly phd students doing mass surveys of interviews or studying metadata. The expensive stuff is engineering, clinical trials, specialized equipment for labs... that stuff is also being hit.

It’s also all science across the board. The Republicans have made sure that research goes underfunded.

> Clearly professors or scholars in Women's studies / gender studies

Good riddance. The standards for scholarship in these fields are laughable; see how Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work accepted for publication a form of Mein Kampf, rewritten to use more modern inclusive and feminist language [0] [1].

If your field of study is so epistemically bankrupt and your systems of review so defective as to not be able to identify Nazi ideology when a few words are swapped around, and to then accept those ideas for publication, it's not clear to me that you should be receiving any funding at all - particularly when it's those same fields that are so vocally and vociferously against this ideology.

[0] http://norskk.is/bytta/menn/our_struggle_is_my_struggle.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

Bruh. We have politicians in the US who are literally laughing about feeding immigrants to alligators: https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article30...

Not sure if you're just being obtuse, but, er, I mean, yeah, climate science is in a lot of trouble under ol' minihands.

... because?

Do you not see the irony in your statement?

What is conservatism if not an ideology?

All you're saying is universities that align with the prevalent ideology of the authoritarian regime will be fine. Congrats, you're now the Soviet Union.

this is completely out of touch with what's actually happening, hundreds of millions of dollars are being pulled from ongoing research that's entirely apolitical... it's a campaign of vengeance

> What are those clowns gonna do? go back to the US or find a next country to travel to? … Researchers are supposed to think long term

I will ignore the ad hominem part of your argument because it’s mean-spirited and does nothing to contribute to the discussion. Instead I would focus on the reality of research funding. Liking or disliking the current administration has little or nothing to do with their decision to immigrate. Their field of expertise is an area known to be a target of this administration’s skepticism; and given that they have been capriciously withdrawing funding from numerous disciplines, its logical they will do the same here. What would you suggest they do for four years (or more) while their research is unfunded?

I wouldn't read all that much into polling two years out, especially given that traditionally they don't do great in the second round. The French presidency also has a somewhat lesser scope to fuck everything up than the US presidency has, and then of course there is Europe (even amongst the ol' Nazis, pretty much all talk of Frexit has evaporated after the object lesson of Brexit).

Climate science, space physics, planetary sciences, astronomy all heavily impacted. MRNA research, cut. There are so many cuts it's hard to keep track of. So no it's not just whatever things you think are "woke". And, this is done not to save money but as a deliberate anti science agenda.

Experts in the rise of fascism disagree to the point that they, too, have fled the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/opinion/yale-canada-fasci...

Why is it offensive? The current US administration has an outgroup they say ludicrous things about (do you remember the "eating pets" bit?), and have started rounding them up (by masked men in unidentified vehicles and without uniforms) with no due process to send to camps (often abroad).

Various scientific research areas have also been the focus of extensive and frankly asinine criticism. Do you remember when the orange guy drew a hurricane with a sharpie? Or when he proposed nuking it? Or when various research funding was killed by DOGE, often with blatant misrepresentations of what the research was? What about the brain dead woman kept as an incubator?

Various media organisations have been sued on flimsy at best pretenses to silence them (like the CBS trial which was just settled).

If anyone is failing to see the similarities to other historical far right rises to and centralisation of power, they're lacking in knowledge on these, or stand to benefit.

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