European universities have just invented a new cause: welcoming researchers in distress who believe they have to flee Donald Trump’s United States. The allegation is that he has declared war on academic freedom, but the reality is less flattering. Limitations on what research receives funding do indeed exist on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is not certain that research exiles will benefit from the change.
It is a well-established talking point touted by the mainstream press: with his energetic takeover of the country in January, Donald Trump would like to kill freedom of research in the United States. Science would be in danger, and researchers would be in dire straits, the media claims. Fortunately, European universities are there to heroically take up the torch and welcome the refugees of science—now raised by the virtues of journalism to the rank of heirs of Einstein and Freud fleeing Nazism.
In Belgium, the University of Brussels, which is alarmed to see millions in funding disappear for ideological reasons in America, intends to raise funds to welcome researchers now ‘censored’ by the Trump administration.
In France, the University of Aix-Marseille in Provence has also loudly positioned itself to be the asylum for these castaways of knowledge. Some have contacted French laboratories and are coming to settle down to continue their work with greater peace of mind.
France info gave the floor to Andrea, an American researcher specialising in infectious diseases and epidemics, working on mother and child health in Africa. We learn that Andrea is joining the University of Aix-Marseille to escape Trumpist persecution. Has Andrea been fired? Has her research funding been withdrawn? Not at all. But you never know, she says.
“The main impact of Donald Trump’s policies on my work is that they have created a climate of total uncertainty and fear. And even though I still have a job, even though we are still receiving funds, there is no information on whether or not the subsidies will continue in the United States,” she explains.
“A climate of uncertainty and fear” is what would justify exile. You should know that the fears raised by the progressive Left are always good fears, which must be taken seriously. The Right, on the other hand, “plays on fears” in a totally cynical way. It’s not the same thing, is it?
Emmanuelle Hénin emphasises this in an interview with L’Incorrect, following the refusal of the Presses Universitaires de France to publish her collective work on wokism. While there is obviously a risk of collateral damage with the cancellation of useful research programmes in the budget cuts made by Trump, his administration is above all putting an end to an insane waste of public funds for programmes whose exclusive ideological militancy is well-established. We are not talking about prohibition; we are talking about funding. The question of the granting of public funding raises that of a hierarchy of values, which is in itself simply unbearable in the eyes of the Left. Is it a priority to grant funding to a thesis on “Going Flat: Challenging Gender, Stigma, and Cure through Lesbian Breast Cancer Experience” (University of South Florida)?
The rhetoric of the progressive Left is well-known. Fed by state money, the Left believes that any removal of public funding is tantamount to a ban on its subsidised activities. It is the same kind of discourse that we hear ad nauseam in cultural matters in France. When a region, such as the Pays-de-la Loire region, announced a few weeks ago that it wanted to reduce public spending on cultural and community programmes, the Left cried that culture was being murdered, that artists were being censored—when it is just a matter of pointing out that the public administration does not have to take charge of the entire field of human activity, and that it is up to the creators to work to convince private investors of the relevance of their approach.
For the moment, the University of Aix-Marseille claims to have received around thirty applications and says it can release €10–15 million to host around 15 American researchers with a budget of €600–800,000 per researcher over three years. But once the initial enthusiasm and the euphoria generated by the staging of the resistance have worn off, these American researchers will soon have to face the facts: the French university has no money to give them, and the salary scales of French researchers are a reflection of the rest of the country—derisory. It is not for nothing that, for decades, the elite of French research has been fleeing the country to find funds elsewhere, precisely on the other side of the Atlantic, to carry out their work. And if American researchers manage—as has been seen in the past—to negotiate some financial arrangements, we can be sure that in the medium term, the good old French Marxist-inspired unions will come to remind them of reality and ask them to show solidarity with their Gallic comrades—all while generating the necessary tensions within the teams. Anti-Trumpist benevolence certainly has its limits.
For the European reader who might be taken in by the journalistic rhetoric describing Trump’s United States in 2025 as an avatar of Germany under Goebbels’ Reichskulturkammer, we would like to remind you that academic freedom and freedom of research on this side of the Atlantic is, in many respects, a vast myth. If in the United States today, using ‘LGBTQI+’ in your research programme can result in your exclusion from a funding programme, in France today, conversely, it is in your best interest to choose the right words to present your research project and hope to be accepted in a laboratory—especially in the humanities. The author of these lines has personally paid the price. You will be advised to change your name to avoid coming across as too ‘vieille France.’ You will be suggested to link your project in one way or another to a ‘gender issue’, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with your core business. If, on the other hand, like Rachele Borghi, you define yourself as an “academic pornactivist” specialising in the links between space, gender, and sexuality, you can hope to obtain a position at the Sorbonne. These methods are not respectable, and do not demonstrate a greater degree of freedom than would exist in the United States.
Searching for Academic Freedom in Woke Europe
Photo: Pexels on Pixabay
European universities have just invented a new cause: welcoming researchers in distress who believe they have to flee Donald Trump’s United States. The allegation is that he has declared war on academic freedom, but the reality is less flattering. Limitations on what research receives funding do indeed exist on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is not certain that research exiles will benefit from the change.
It is a well-established talking point touted by the mainstream press: with his energetic takeover of the country in January, Donald Trump would like to kill freedom of research in the United States. Science would be in danger, and researchers would be in dire straits, the media claims. Fortunately, European universities are there to heroically take up the torch and welcome the refugees of science—now raised by the virtues of journalism to the rank of heirs of Einstein and Freud fleeing Nazism.
In Belgium, the University of Brussels, which is alarmed to see millions in funding disappear for ideological reasons in America, intends to raise funds to welcome researchers now ‘censored’ by the Trump administration.
In France, the University of Aix-Marseille in Provence has also loudly positioned itself to be the asylum for these castaways of knowledge. Some have contacted French laboratories and are coming to settle down to continue their work with greater peace of mind.
France info gave the floor to Andrea, an American researcher specialising in infectious diseases and epidemics, working on mother and child health in Africa. We learn that Andrea is joining the University of Aix-Marseille to escape Trumpist persecution. Has Andrea been fired? Has her research funding been withdrawn? Not at all. But you never know, she says.
“The main impact of Donald Trump’s policies on my work is that they have created a climate of total uncertainty and fear. And even though I still have a job, even though we are still receiving funds, there is no information on whether or not the subsidies will continue in the United States,” she explains.
“A climate of uncertainty and fear” is what would justify exile. You should know that the fears raised by the progressive Left are always good fears, which must be taken seriously. The Right, on the other hand, “plays on fears” in a totally cynical way. It’s not the same thing, is it?
Emmanuelle Hénin emphasises this in an interview with L’Incorrect, following the refusal of the Presses Universitaires de France to publish her collective work on wokism. While there is obviously a risk of collateral damage with the cancellation of useful research programmes in the budget cuts made by Trump, his administration is above all putting an end to an insane waste of public funds for programmes whose exclusive ideological militancy is well-established. We are not talking about prohibition; we are talking about funding. The question of the granting of public funding raises that of a hierarchy of values, which is in itself simply unbearable in the eyes of the Left. Is it a priority to grant funding to a thesis on “Going Flat: Challenging Gender, Stigma, and Cure through Lesbian Breast Cancer Experience” (University of South Florida)?
The rhetoric of the progressive Left is well-known. Fed by state money, the Left believes that any removal of public funding is tantamount to a ban on its subsidised activities. It is the same kind of discourse that we hear ad nauseam in cultural matters in France. When a region, such as the Pays-de-la Loire region, announced a few weeks ago that it wanted to reduce public spending on cultural and community programmes, the Left cried that culture was being murdered, that artists were being censored—when it is just a matter of pointing out that the public administration does not have to take charge of the entire field of human activity, and that it is up to the creators to work to convince private investors of the relevance of their approach.
For the moment, the University of Aix-Marseille claims to have received around thirty applications and says it can release €10–15 million to host around 15 American researchers with a budget of €600–800,000 per researcher over three years. But once the initial enthusiasm and the euphoria generated by the staging of the resistance have worn off, these American researchers will soon have to face the facts: the French university has no money to give them, and the salary scales of French researchers are a reflection of the rest of the country—derisory. It is not for nothing that, for decades, the elite of French research has been fleeing the country to find funds elsewhere, precisely on the other side of the Atlantic, to carry out their work. And if American researchers manage—as has been seen in the past—to negotiate some financial arrangements, we can be sure that in the medium term, the good old French Marxist-inspired unions will come to remind them of reality and ask them to show solidarity with their Gallic comrades—all while generating the necessary tensions within the teams. Anti-Trumpist benevolence certainly has its limits.
For the European reader who might be taken in by the journalistic rhetoric describing Trump’s United States in 2025 as an avatar of Germany under Goebbels’ Reichskulturkammer, we would like to remind you that academic freedom and freedom of research on this side of the Atlantic is, in many respects, a vast myth. If in the United States today, using ‘LGBTQI+’ in your research programme can result in your exclusion from a funding programme, in France today, conversely, it is in your best interest to choose the right words to present your research project and hope to be accepted in a laboratory—especially in the humanities. The author of these lines has personally paid the price. You will be advised to change your name to avoid coming across as too ‘vieille France.’ You will be suggested to link your project in one way or another to a ‘gender issue’, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with your core business. If, on the other hand, like Rachele Borghi, you define yourself as an “academic pornactivist” specialising in the links between space, gender, and sexuality, you can hope to obtain a position at the Sorbonne. These methods are not respectable, and do not demonstrate a greater degree of freedom than would exist in the United States.
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