Amid unprecedented challenges to US higher education, the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced this month a new “Choose Europe” Initiative, designed to attract the “best and brightest” scientists from around the world.
“As threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles. Europe must remain the home of academic and scientific freedom,” said von der Leyen in a speech on May 5.
Though the Commission did not specifically mention the Trump administration in its launch of the initiative, it comes at a time of unrivalled threats to scientific research in the US, with institutions across Europe ramping up efforts to attract those fleeing the attacks on academic freedom and research funding.
As IE University provost Manuel Muñiz told his European colleagues: “I don’t think we should celebrate this, to be quite frank.”
“Sitting in Europe, you might read this as something positive for the European research and higher education landscape.
“But this is diminishing the capacity of colleagues across the Atlantic to do very important things. Things that have huge positive spillovers for all of us,” Muñiz said at the CIVICA Global Forum of European universities.
Muñiz highlighted the world-leading research of US national bodies and universities in health and bio sciences, which is being threatened by cuts to federal research funding, attacks on international students and researchers, and government proposals to tax university endowments.
“The North Atlantic higher education space is arguably the most integrated, where you see the most flows of talent back and forth,” said Muñiz, suggesting that European institutions would be a natural choice for scientists leaving the US.
What’s more, Europe has one of the most internationalised higher education spaces, with many programs offered fully in English and a good deal of institutions hiring faculty, according to Muñiz.
One of the biggest consequences of the fracturing international environment is the huge pressure for Europe to further integrate
Manuel Muñiz, IE University
Notably, there’s a distinction to be made about the level of faculty likely to leave the US, as well as what makes them unique in the European academic landscape.
“The most securely placed people are not that moveable,” said Ikhlaq Sidu, dean of IE School of Science & Technology, suggesting that mid-level faculty were likely to be most impacted by threats to grant funding.
“Talent for the sake of talent isn’t the issue,” added Sidu. “What’s really valuable about those people is that they’ve worked in a different environment.”
“Europe has a more structured, top-down approach. In the US you have Silicon Valley and it’s more ‘wild west’ – people learn to be self-reliant and proactive.”
“When you bring these people over, they bring with them a culture of doing things differently,” said Sidu.
For Cornelia Woll, president of Germany’s Hertie School, Europe must act as a haven for academic freedom in a response to rising populism throughout the world, not just in the US.
In agreement with Muñiz, Woll said there was “certainly” no room to celebrate in the current geopolitical climate.
“The only way to show a little bit of resistance to that desire for destruction [of higher education] – not just in the US but in general – is to know that some of these assets, particularly knowledge, is mobile, and we will host it.
“And that is the best way to protect the scientists across the world from the tendency of autocrats to try and control them,” said Woll.
With the ripple effect of the Trump administration’s hostile policies being felt across the globe, one silver lining could be the reversal of Europe’s fragmentation, said speakers.
“One of the biggest consequences of the fracturing international environment is the huge pressure for Europe to further integrate,” Muñiz told delegates, including economic integration, security and defence, and in the higher education space.
Appealing to conference attendees from across the continent, Muñiz stressed that the European university alliances were “the most sophisticated instruments that Europe has deployed to allow its higher education institutions to collaborate.”
Elsewhere, speakers emphasised the growing pressure for universities to show they are culturally relevant and prove their value to society.
“In recent years, there have been questions raised about trust in scientific knowledge related to Covid, questions about climate change, and about the role of universities in the culture wars or the positions they are taking on international conflicts,” said Jeremy Perelman, vice president for international affairs at Sciences Po in Paris.
“It’s not just ideological projects that seek to control universities, but we have to answer to citizens themselves,” he added, echoing fellow European sector leaders advocating for universities as vital tools of public service.
