Following the Second World War, the United States began to significantly invest in scientific research. The goal was to position the United States as the world’s preeminent science superpower. That decision succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Research-intensive universities became a gold mine of novel ideas and highly trained young people, both essential ingredients for successful start-ups. Young people, including many from Canada, seeing the opportunity and energy there, went to the US to train. Some returned home, but many stayed, having met partners there, had families, and launched successful careers in academia and/or in industry.
Within just 60 days of taking office, the Trump administration has blown up this goose that has been laying golden eggs for over half a century. American science, once the envy of the world, is now on life support. How has this happened?
First, the Trump administration has made significant cuts to the budgets and staff of the agencies responsible for funding research, including the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research.
Second, the administration has embarked on a vendetta against Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities ($400M and $800M, respectively). Many researchers have been laid off and their important research projects seriously damaged as a result. As Canadian Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins put it, “We (i.e. JHU) are deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government.” That compact, which has been in place since the Second World War, is broken. The result has been chaos and the termination of research vital to American security, economic productivity and the health of Americans and people everywhere.
Third, contrary to the repeated rhetoric of members of the Trump administration, free speech has been severely limited by censoring hundreds of words that don’t align with the Trump administration’s views, words such as climate change, renewable energy, diversity and gender.
Fourth, US foreign aid programs, for which the US has received broad acclaim, have been eliminated. USAID, responsible for distributing funds across the world, have been central to the response to fighting disease, supporting development, addressing climate disasters, and saving lives. PEPFAR funded life-saving antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS, saving tens of thousands of lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Research on the development of new drugs and vaccines to fight other life-threatening diseases will now be slowed or eliminated because of these draconian measures.
And finally, the Trump Cabinet, and indeed the president himself, responsible for guiding the future of the world’s leading scientific nation and whose vast wealth largely stems from past investments in science, includes members who are anti-science. Vaccine skepticism, in the face of unvaccinated children dying unnecessarily from the measles virus, is “normal”, and climate change is simply the “side effect of building the modern world”.
Is it any wonder many US-based scientists would jump at the opportunity to emigrate to countries that appreciate and support science?
How can Canada best support our expats and other scientists working in the US? There has never been a more important time to throw life jackets to these scientists. Now is the time for Canada to increase our investments in university research with the goal of doing exactly what the Americans did after the Second World War and for the same reasons: develop the new ideas and technologies that will increase Canada’s lagging productivity, improve the health and wealth of our citizens, and use our leadership in science to work with low and medium income countries to conquer disease, build resilient health care systems, and improve living standards through science and scholarship .
We should establish a new ambitious Canada Research Chairs program to bring expats and other US-based scientists to Canada. Twenty-five years ago, Canada launched a Chairs program that funded 2000 research chairs across Canada. In 2017, we launched another Chairs program to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. That program enabled one of those chair holders, a Mexican citizen working at Harvard, to emigrate to Canada to the University of Toronto to escape Trump’s anti/Mexican rhetoric. He now leads a leading-edge program, funded by the Canadian government and in partnership with many companies, to discover new materials using AI, robotics and chemistry. His story and others like that illustrate the important role that Canada can play at this critical moment
Science today is transforming our world, leading to new ways of thinking about what it means to be human, new treatments for today’s life-threatening and debilitating diseases, and new ways to store, transmit and analyze information. At this critical moment, Canada has an important role to play in the face of the anti-science atmosphere now sweeping our neighbours to the south? This is the time to launch an ambitious ‘welcome home’ program as the right response to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. It is right for science, for expats and others in the US who suddenly find themselves unable to do science, and for young people who want opportunities to address the great challenges of our time.
Dr. Alan Bernstein C.C., Professor of Global Health, University of Oxford; President Emeritus,
CIFAR; and Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Eddie Goldenberg, C.M., former Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Canada