Von der Leyen and Macron launch effort to make Europe a ‘safe haven’ for science
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign against American higher education as she unveiled a half-billion-euro plan to attract foreign researchers.
“The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.”
Appearing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at Paris’ storied Sorbonne University on Monday, von der Leyen said the “Choose Europe for Science” initiative would put forward a €500 million program from 2025 to 2027 to attract foreign researchers to “help support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world.”
Macron said the country would commit another €100 million from the France 2030 program to woo researchers and make Europe a “safe haven” for science.
“There can be no lasting democracy without free and open science,” he said.
Several speakers at the event hit out at Trump’s efforts to gut federal research funding and threats to cut funding to universities like Harvard to the tune of billions of dollars over conservative criticisms of higher education and allegations of antisemitism on campuses. Both French Minister of Higher Education Philippe Baptiste and Robert Proctor, a prominent professor of the history of science at Stanford, called what’s happening across the Atlantic a “reverse enlightenment.”
The head of the European executive did not name-check American researchers or Trump, but her targets were clear. She even framed her speech around the story of Marie Curie — the groundbreaking, Nobel Prize-winning scientist who fled Russian-occupied Poland for France.
Macron’s criticisms were more explicit.
“We must not downplay what is at stake today. No one could have imagined a few years ago that one of the world’s largest democracies would abolish research programs on the grounds that there was the word diversity in their programs,” he said. “No one could have imagined that one of the world’s greatest democracies could, in one fell swoop, strike out the possibility of obtaining a visa for a researcher.”
Von der Leyen also announced she would put forward a “European Innovation Act” and a “Startup and Scaleup Strategy” to cut red tape and boost access to venture capital to help turn innovative science into business opportunities. She pledged to legally codify the freedom of scientific research on the continent by proposing a “European Research Area Act.” [Continue reading…]
After the Trump administration dismissed nearly 400 scientists who compile the nation’s major quadrennial report on the impacts of climate change in the U.S., two scientific groups announced a plan to publish a special collection focused on the subject to ensure the scientists’ work can be accessed.
The American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest association of earth and space scientists, and the American Meteorological Society, the professional society for atmospheric and related sciences and services, announced they would be inviting climate scientists and researchers to submit their work for what they said would be a “first of its kind” collection.
The groups say their collection isn’t meant to replace the National Climate Assessment, but would complement it, since the dismissal of hundreds of scientists suggests that the next National Climate Assessment may not be as extensive as the previous ones. The Trump administration is legally obligated to produce the assessment, but the White House told CBS News that it’s evaluating the scope of the assessment that it will publish.
The National Climate Assessment is a major publication produced every four years that summarizes the impacts of climate change in the U.S., and it is congressionally mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The sixth edition is scheduled for publication in 2027, and preparations have been underway for months to meet that deadline.
The assessment helps federal, state and local governments and businesses to prepare for the impacts of climate change and adapt to and mitigate challenges arising from climate change. [Continue reading…]
The Trump administration has ordered the closure of 25 scientific centers that monitor US waters for flooding and drought, and manage supply levels to ensure communities around the country don’t run out of water.
The United States Geological Service (USGS) water science centers’ employees and equipment track levels and quality in ground and surface water with thousands of gauges. The data it produces plays a critical role across the economy to protect human life, protect property, maintain water supplies and help clean up chemical or oil spills.
The targeted centers are part of a larger network, and the Trump administration based its decision to make cuts on leases near expiration, not scientific reasoning, said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit that is tracking the issue. [Continue reading…]