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Europe launches drive for scientists in swipe at Trump’s funding freeze

The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze U.S. government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program," French President Emmanuel Macron said at the “Choose Europe for Science” event in Paris...

Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU’s executive branch would set up a “super grant” program aimed at offering “a longer-term perspective to the very best” in the field.


Oh dear, the reverse brain drain seems to be accelerating. 

Interesting though, because it feels like political anti-Trump sentiment rather than a coolly calculated attempt to attract competent scientists from the US. 

European elites promote themselves as professionals, but as usual this does not feel professional, it feels too tediously familiar for that, the familiar tedium of grandstanding politics.