Max Planck Society offers a haven for top US researchers

The Max Planck Society (MPG), Germany’s top research organisation, says that the country could benefit from the new United States administration’s increasingly restrictive research policies, and is stepping up efforts to recruit elite US scientists and scholars.

The MPG’s 84 institutes and facilities conduct basic research in the natural and life sciences as well as the social sciences and the humanities, the focus being on fields that are particularly innovative or demanding in terms of resources.

A further priority is to foster creative potential, to which end the MPG seeks to attract junior scientists and scholars from all over the world.

According to the MPG’s president Patrick Cramer, the US now represents a “new talent pool” for Germany, Spiegel newspaper reported. Already, applications from the USA for posts as heads of research groups have doubled compared to last year.

The Max Planck Society is now stepping up efforts to recruit elite researchers who are unhappy with US president Donald Trump’s science policy approach and are considering moving to Germany.

Areas the MPG sees under particular threat in the US include climate and Earth system research, gender research, and infectious disease research.

The MPG is allocating more funding to creating additional posts, such as heads of research groups, in a bid to offer opportunities for US researchers while simultaneously strengthening the MPG’s research potential, according to Spiegel.

Cramer is also planning to visit several US cities – above all, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington – to meet higher education and research representatives as well as politicians. Furthermore, he seeks to have talks with elite researchers who have voiced an interest in coming to Germany.

Commenting on the Trump administration’s freezing and re-assessing of funding for the US National Institutes of Health and putting the processing of new funding applications on hold, Cramer said that the move represented “a clear violation of academic freedom, for the choice of research topics is up to the researchers, not the White House”.

In the four turbulent weeks since Donald Trump returned to the American presidency, universities and research have come under fire, with research funds slashed or frozen pending review.

Universities and colleges have been ordered to stop activities around diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other things, and Trump threatened to deport pro-Hamas protestors.

Expand international HE, says DAAD

This week the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) called on the future federal government, to be elected during polls on 23 February – a snap election called following the collapse of the governing coalition late last year – to decisively expand the internationalisation of higher education and science.

The call was well-timed, given the rise of the far-right, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is anticipated to come in second.

There are some 405,000 international students enrolled at German universities, according to DAAD, and nearly 75,000 international researchers work in the German science system.

“This makes Germany one of the world’s top countries, ranking second in the world for international researchers and third for international students,” it said in a release on 19 February.

DAAD urged Germany and universities to maintain close relations with the US, as well as partnerships in the European Union and with the United Kingdom, while new strategic partner countries such as India “are coming into focus”.

Said DAAD President, Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee: “In these crisis-ridden times, science diplomacy and the science cooperation area are making resilient and important contributions to German security.

Science is a ‘hard currency’ in foreign and security policy, and it is important to sustainably support this work, especially at German universities.”

Email Michael Gardner at: michael.gardner@uw-news.com