Researchers leave US for ‘scientific asylum’ in France

It was on a United States-bound flight in March, as Brian Sandberg stressed about whether he would be stopped at security, that the American historian knew the time had come for him to leave his home country, writes Ashifa Kassam for The Guardian.

For months, he had watched Donald Trump’s administration unleash a multipronged attack on academia – slashing funding, targeting international students and deeming certain fields and even keywords off limits. As his plane approached the US, it felt as though the battle had hit home, as Sandberg worried he would face reprisals over comments made during his travels to the French media on the future of research in the US.

“It makes you think about what your status is as a researcher and the principle of academic freedom,” he said. Soon after, he became one of the nearly 300 researchers to apply for a French university’s offer of “scientific asylum”.
Full report on The Guardian site