French officials are urging their country's research institutions to consider welcoming scientists abandoning the United States due to President Donald Trump's funding cuts, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Sunday, March 9.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, his government has cut federal research funding and sought to dismiss hundreds of federal workers working on health and climate research.
"Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the United States," France's minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, wrote in a letter to the country's institutions. "We would naturally wish to welcome a certain number of them."
Baptiste urged research leaders to send him "concrete proposals on the topic, both on priority technologies and scientific fields." The government is "committed, and will rise to the occasion," he added in a statement sent to AFP on Sunday.
This week, Aix-Marseille University in the south of France announced it was setting up a programme dedicated to welcoming US researchers, notably those working on climate change. It announced a new program to welcome scientists who "may feel threatened or hindered" in the US and want "to continue their work in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence and academic freedom."
Besides the cuts overseen by Trump's billionaire tech tycoon ally Elon Musk, the US leader has withdrawn Washington from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. In protest, scientists rallied in cities across the US on Friday, with many of their French counterparts in the southwestern city of Toulouse attending a demonstration in solidarity.
In an editorial published in Le Monde, French academics including Nobel Prize winners Esther Duflo, an economist, and Anne L'Huillier, a physicist, denounced "unprecedented attacks" on US science, saying they undermined "one of the pillars of democracy."
The director of France's Pasteur public health institute, Yasmine Belkaid, told French newspaper La Tribune in an interview published Sunday that she received "calls every day" from US-based European and American scientists looking for jobs.
For French research, "you might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity all the same," Belkaid, who once worked as an immunology researcher in the US, was quoted as saying. "It is time for us to position ourselves as central players in this research ecosystem, which is necessary for our economic independence."
The suspension of some grants has led some US universities to reduce the number of students accepted into doctoral programs or research positions. Other targets for cuts include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the leading US agency responsible for weather forecasting, climate analysis and marine conservation – with hundreds of scientists and experts already let go.
The United Nations' World Meteorological Organization said NOAA and the US were essential for providing life-saving data to monitor weather and the climate globally. Trump's appointment of noted vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services has also angered many scientists.