With the welcome mat withdrawn for promising researchers from around the world, America is at risk of losing its longstanding pre-eminence in the sciences.
For decades, Bangalore, India, has been an incubator for scientific talent, sending newly minted Ph.D.s around the world to do groundbreaking research. In an ordinary year, many aim their sights at labs in the United States.
“These are our students, and we want them to go and do something amazing,” said a professor at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, Raj Ladher.
But this is not an ordinary year.
When Professor Ladher queried some 30 graduates in the city recently about their plans, only one had certain employment in the United States. For many of the others, the political turmoil in Washington has dried up job opportunities in what Professor Ladher calls “the best research ecosystem in the world.” Some decided they would now rather take their skills elsewhere, including Austria, Japan and Australia, while others opted to stay in India.
As the Trump administration moves with abandon to deny visas, expel foreign students and slash spending on research, scientists in the United States are becoming increasingly alarmed. The global supremacy that the United States has long enjoyed in health, biology, the physical sciences and other fields, they warn, may be coming to an end.
“If things continue as they are, American science is ruined,” said David W. Hogg, a professor of physics and data science at New York University who works closely with astronomers and other experts around the world. “If it becomes impossible to work with non-U.S. scientists,” he said, “it would basically render the kinds of research that I do impossible.”
Research cuts and moves to curtail the presence of foreign students by the Trump administration have happened at a dizzying pace.
