Aix-Marseille University (AMU) will welcome 31 American researchers at the start of the school year, threatened in their academic freedom by Donald Trump’s policy, as part of its SAFE Place for Science program (“A safe place for science”), announced on Friday July 18 its president Eric Berton on France Inter.
As of March 31, the deadline for applications, the AMU had received 300 files, and a total of 600 American researchers expressed the wish to come to work in Marseille University, one of the largest in France in number of students (80,000, including 12,000 internationals).
The 31 selected researchers “Are senior profiles, high -level teachers”who work in environmental sciences, in the fields of humanities (gender studies, history, geography), biology, health, epidemiology, immunology, and “More surprising, colleagues who come from NASA and will join us in our astrophysical laboratories”added Mr. Berton.
“The arrival of obscurantism”
“The hardest part in this episode is the poignant messages of the people we have not taken”he said, considering however that “These colleagues will also be able to find solutions in other French universities and in Europe” Thanks to the Choose France program and European scholarships. “They have pressures, the databases of colleagues who work in the climate are sometimes erased, they can no longer work, but they are asked to justify their salary, which is quite funny”said Berton.
“What’s going on in the United States, it influences the whole world” : In France, “Programs are stopped because in the United States it is arrested. You have to be up to the event. What is happening in the United States is anti-science is the arrival of obscurantism. It is the honor of the French University to bring a glow of hope to these colleagues ”he said.
The president of AMU, who defends alongside former president François Hollande the status of “Scientific refugee”recalled that Aix-Marseille University also welcomed “25 colleagues who come from Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine, Palestine”. “In the same way as a political opponent, the scientist can hinder the power in place, when [celui-ci] is climatosceptic for example “he added.
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, researchers and universities have been in the crosshairs of his administration and billions of dollars in research subsidies have been deleted.
