Von der Leyen, Macron knock Trump’s war on universities as ‘gigantic miscalculation’

 The European Commission chief and the French president are trying to woo American researchers with a new program called “Choose Europe for Science.”   

PARIS ― 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.”

She added that she wants EU countries to spend 3 percent of their gross domestic product on research by 2030.

Macron announced a similar plan last month, “Choose France for Science,” but the initiative was met with criticism from French researchers who have been fighting for their universities to provide higher salaries and better working conditions to compete with their American counterparts. The French president said that they’ve received “several hundred” applications for the program.

Macron attempted a similar pitch during Trump’s first term after the U.S. president withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, but it’s not clear to what extent the “Make Our Planet Great Again” plan worked.  

Macron said Monday that the program allowed France to “welcome the best researchers” whose work on climate science was under threat  

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ursula-von-der-leyen-emmanuel-macron-choose-europe-against-us-donald-trump-war-university-gigantic-miscalculation/